


don't you know the kids aren't alright?

by safeandsound13



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe, Angst, BE AWARE: malia and stalia friendly, Comfort, Everyone lives!AU, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Humor, PACK!!!!!!!!!!!! IS!!!!!!!!!!!! MOST!!!!!!!!!!!!! IMPORTANT!!!!!!!! ALWYAS!!!!!!!, Pack Feels, Romance, Scott's Pack, Stiles' POV, UST, Zombie AU, apocalypse au, crack fic-ish, flangst, main stydia, mainly a lot of pack feels, okay enough tags im crazy, some onesided scira, some scallison/scisaac/malisaac, zombie!au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-09 00:09:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4326156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/safeandsound13/pseuds/safeandsound13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"my name is stiles stilinski and if you’re reading this, it’s because i didn’t survive." / Or the pack finds themselves amidst a zombie apocalypse and Stiles is a pessimistic assclown like always, but at least he's a pessimistic assclown that wants to save Lydia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	don't you know the kids aren't alright?

**Author's Note:**

> that moment when you reach 37 pages and ur like okay lol this was supposed to be a 5k fic but im in too deep now so lets drag me to hell and finish this! it's a zombie au because why the hell not BITCH! i listened to a lot of screamo writing this, ! ignore me!
> 
> THIS IS A HUGE ASS DISCLAIMER CUZ UNNECESSARY HATE IS FOR NERDS AND IM NOT HERE FOR IT: so there's stalia in this because 1) their relationship is real no need to deny it 2) he has feelings for malia although not as strong as for lydia theyre there and would we all REALLY still like stiles if he'd just threat malia like trash even tho hes her gF?? the answer is no 4) uhm malia is a tiny lil princess why would he not love her 5) i love all my teen wolf character equally except for isaac lahey because he is my SON 6) spoiler alert: they break up because this is a stydia fic but STILL!!!!!!!!1 if you dont like stalia or malia, i'm sorry but ya gone have to deal!!!! 7) i skipped three and you didn't notice ha Ha, ya been punk'D!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> 
> this takes place during the original gang’s senior year or something i dont know its au deal with it  
> headsup: allison didn’t die and isaac didnt leave to become a witch on a different supernatural show. ok cool. also, boyd and erica LIVE! derek and cora are in south-america backpacking or staying the fuck away from fire and argents or whatever :)
> 
> this is another disclaimer that you dont care about: im not a native english speaker or writer for that matter and i try to make my sentences like /i/ think stiles would think them, so sometimes they might sound a little jumbled but if any character's narrative would be a stream of consciousness, it would be his. still, sorry for any mistakes and all ya know the drill
> 
> now i have established im a huge ass punk, i'll leave you to it:)
> 
> songs are the kids aren’t alright by fall out boy (in the title) & warrior by imagine dragons (in the fic) MY broke butt OWNS NOTHING

.

 **here we are, don't turn away now (don't turn away)**  
**we are the warriors that built this town.**

.

_like beacon hills wasn’t already a total supernatural hotspot (spoiler alert, but since i guess now that this has happened werewolves aren’t that big of a deal anyway), zombies evaded our town several months ago. yep. ~~zombies~~ ZOMBIES. people died all over earth and were coming back to life. now this wasn’t an entirely new concept - because who in the frack in Beacon Hills actually dies and stays dead? - but it was kind of trippy to see stuff like my seventy year old teacher from third grade ripping out a patch of skin on a dude’s neck. that WAS new._

_okay, so rewind. there had been reports of an virus outbreak near the east coast of the US but when it reached california in around six days, it became clear it wasn’t just a simple virus outbreak. maybe it was the fact it took less ~~then~~ than a week for it to cross 3000 miles, or maybe it was the fact the ones infected were chewing on other people’s arms. chicken or egg, egg or chicken. _

_zombies, dude. who knew? ~~not just a bomb halloween outfit or a plot device in your favorite the walking dead episode. okay thats tactless.~~ actual zombies. _

_you know what sucks more than having zombies kill your hopes and dreams? quarantine. q-tine is total apeshit. i miss my old life, the times where some creepy doctors taking over teenagers bodies in order for them to kill my best friend were my biggest worries in the world. _

_now i’m just waiting, and i don’t know for what. the world will never be the same again._

_my name is stiles stilinski and if you’re reading this, it’s because i didn’t survive._

_P.S. my first name isn’t actually stiles - lets give my parents some credit - but it’s a long story and paper is scarce and i don’t have a lot of time just remember me as badass. please._

_P.P.S.  lydia, if you ever read this: i was totally fucking right about my baseball bat theory. ~~and i~~   ~~and i want you to know~~   ~~and i~~   ~~i should tell you~~ and i love you, but what’s more important is that i was right. so. yeah. this might be the most anti-climatic ending to a letter ever, but im about to come save your cute butt so whatever_

.

The only reason Stiles and his friends even survived the initial outbreak, (which they hadn’t seen coming because when something like a virus in New York is on the news, you don’t actually expect it to ever come to your town, let alone that it’ll cause you chem lab partner Danny to want to literally bite your head off, because things like that don’t happen here, or to you. It’s not like they were low on supernatural creatures roaming their streets. They could’ve used a pass on this one. Looking at you God, or whoever is testing him right now) is because they were in the middle of a pack-meeting in the gym about some tiny supernatural inconvenience that really seems like no frickin’ big deal right now.

But, Liam was paranoid as frick about literally everything and Kira had disappeared to the other side of the world because her powers were uncontrollable and Malia refused to cut math class again because ‘ _although she couldn’t give less craps about where x was she cared about her education or at least didn’t want to end up like Peter, seriously, does he even have a job? beside being a homicidal, power hungry psychopathic asshole, she meant?_ ’ (okay some of that commentary might’ve been his) and Isaac was a douche dating his best friend’s true love and Theo _totally_ turned out to be evil, like he said from the damn beginning. Scott and his non existing trust issues.

Anyway, Liam had forced them out of class and into an empty gym and they had just started arguing on exactly why Mason was here (he knows there’s strength in numbers, but the dude’s just a human without any sort of special skills whatsoever and okay, so is he, but you know, he’s, like, whatever, their _only_ token human guy) when they hear the sound of helicopters, flying low over the school.

“I told you I heard something,” Isaac remarks, like he hadn’t been complaining about an ‘unfamiliar, humming noise like a lost fly getting on his nerves’ (his personal suggestion: maybe the sound of your own voice, Lahey?) for the past ten minutes.

“What do you think it is?” Liam focuses his eyes on Scott, before they get dangerously wide. He swallows hard and Stiles can practically see the conspiracy wheels in his head turning into overdrive, “What if they found out about, you know, _us_ and the army’s here to exterminate us?”

Scott sighs, sending him a sympathetic smile as he opens his mouth to answer, but someone beats him to it. It’s Boyd, who snorts humorlessly as he raises his eyebrows, “Damn, I thought you had anger issues, not hypersensitive infantile issues.”

Liam tightens his jaw, looking about ready to charge at him with a glint of yellow in his eyes and the darker boy holds up his hands in mock defense, a small smirk on his normally emotionless face, “I stand corrected.” Erica elbows him in the ribs for good measure, but the amused smile on her face is undeniable.

Stiles snickers though, poking the younger boy in the side, “Ha-ha, he called you a baby.” Liam glares at him, jerking away from his touch as he stalks over to the back of the gym to lean against a wall in a way to not explode, and, like claw Stiles’ face off. Which, on three multiple occasions, almost happened before. You’d think he’d learn.

“Toddler tantrums,” Isaac mutters under his breath—not even aware anyone was able to hear—Allison stepping down onto his foot as a reward as she speaks up, “Shut up. All of you.” And they do, because she’s Allison, and Allison carries a carry-on handbow in her purse which is on Kira’s ‘ _my belt is actually a katana_ ’ level, maybe just a little above ‘ _psycho killer bitch, but a safe one at that_ ’.

She exchanges an all-knowing look with Scott (that they, B3$T BR0$ for life, still don’t have down, damn) before walking over to Liam to discuss something with him privately, putting her hand on his shoulder, voices quiet. Like he said, toddler tantrums. Time-outs. Mommies kissing their ouchies. Something like that.

“Can someone just go check it out?” Lydia sighs, voice obviously aggravated as she runs a hand through her hair and she browses through his post-it notes stuck onto her own personal bestiary. She’s been awfully quiet, probably due to the fact they were not one step closer to a solution for their supernatural drama of the week on their hit soap opera ‘ _the bold and the homicidal_ ’ than they were before she had to give up her free period of reading trashy magazines for _this_. This being her (kind of) friends talking trash about each other and doing nothing.

Erica cracks her neck (accompanied by a true Reyes eye roll and fixture of her cleavage), jumping off the vaulting buck she’d previously been sitting on next to Boyd. Just as Liam and Allison return sporting small matching smiles, he manages to save one of his precious hot pink post-it’s from disappearing into Isaac greedy claws and the blonde bombshell werewolf makes a move to walk over to the gym doors, one of the four bursts open, revealing a group of—

??? … ???!!!!! was his initial reaction, then:

“Zombies, wow, this is kind of cool,” Mason's eyes are huge with wonder, as he doesn’t seem to realize they’re here to eat him. Or whatever zombies do. Do they bite to eat or bite to procreate, if so then what _do_ they eat? Survival of their own kind was more logical, he guesses. He’d look it up, if one of them wasn’t _seriously_ eyeing his face with hangry (hungry + angry, just FYI) eyes right now.

“Zombies? What’s next? Vampires?” Liam cuts in with an humourless laugh, eyes wide with fear as he swallows tightly. They’re moving towards them in a anticlimactically slow pace, skin rotting and eyes lifeless. It smells, badly.

“We need to get the hell out of here,” Allison says, stepping in front of the young boy and putting her hands on his shoulders to physically turn him back around to face the back of the gym. Then, giving Liam a soft push for good measure and tugging on Isaac’s hand, she mentally starts forming an exit plan. The locker rooms seem like their best option at the moment, all the other doors blocked by incoming people-eaters. There’s about thirty of them inside the gym already, and the number keeps expanding.

They all seem to agree simultaneously on her ‘ _let’s get the crap away from here first and figure the rest out later_ ’ spur of the moment escape idea, not ready to die just yet as they start to make their ways to the other side of the gym.

It takes a moment before Scott halts their escape, eyeing the creatures warily, “Wait. I’m a werewolf. A true alpha. I’m super strong. Doesn’t it say somewhere that werewolf triumphs zombie? It probably does, right?” He seems unsure himself, and his best friend isn’t sure if it’s his insecurity / fishing for encouragement and compliments complex or actual lack of knowledge causing it.

Stiles offers him a shrug, thinking it over himself as Isaac starts nodding, his eyebrows raised. “Probably.” Liam offers to Google it before Lydia cuts in, walking backwards as she speaks, voice awfully calm, with just a touch of annoyance. “Guys, I don’t think we have time for a discussion on who’s rhetorical supernatural balls are bigger when they’re thirty feet away and inching closer every second.”

“Yo, guys, I don’t—I don’t know about you guys but I’m outta here,” Mason throws his thumb over his shoulder, not taking his eyes off the undead marching towards them and more of them coming through the doors. Running towards the boys locker room, arms flailing, and already half across the gym, he informs them, yelling, “I’ll barricade the other side.”

“I’ll fight them,” Scott decides, nodding as if to confirm the smartness of his own statement, already pushing his sleeves up his forearms when Isaac puts his hand on his shoulder, dismissing him, “I’ll go.” We all know you’re just offering that because you’re screwing his ex-girlfriend, Lahey, but nice try.

“Guys,” Stiles eyes the zombies as they just keep coming closer, and closer and closer, everyone acting like they’re not _about_ to be an early midday snack for a bunch of dead people. Erica looks like she’s ready to punch one of them in the face (the zombies, or the pack, he isn’t entirely sure), Allison (accompanied by her Infamous Clenched Fists As A Coping Mechanism But Really Just A Sign Shit’s About To Go Down, Argent-Style) just looks impatient and Lydia rubs her temples, tightening her jaw as some sort of way to collect herself and to not burst out strings of profanity at their stupidity. He has to agree with the strawberry blonde. It’s not like they have time to have a debate over this. Fight or flight. Not stand here talking about our feelings or run the hell away just a second too late. “ _Guys._ ”

Liam clears his throat softly, not ready to disappoint his alpha-in-chief just yet, as he eagerly offers, “Maybe I should go?” He’s already taking two steps into the direction of the _seriously_ bad smelling—what the hell kind of cologne are they wearing? children’s tears? broken dreams? the last two seasons of ‘lost’? death?—creatures, not even seeming to notice a zombie claw missing the side of his ear by an inch.

“No way,” Scott pulling him back by his t-shirt to save him from more tender lovin' zombie touches, before squeezing his shoulder and lowering his voice considerably, “You’re still learning, remember?”

“I’m seriously about to kill one of us myself,” he overhears Lydia mention to Allison, a tone of tiredness to her voice and the curly brunette just hums in response, as if she was already sinceriously considering it. This is too crazy. He feels like all of his senses are on fire. He’s seen a lot of crazy crap in his life, but this had to be it. They’re about to be eaten, and his friends are arguing on who gets to be eaten first to get in Scott’s good graces and they’re all just standing there—doing nothing. He counts his fingers, just to be sure.

“Uhm, guys,” Stiles tries again, this time actually pulling on their alpha’s sleeve, afraid to take his eyes off the zombies in case they suddenly get super fast (“ _psych! tricked y’all supposed-to-be human bitches”_ ) but continues to be ignored. He doesn’t think his lack of mistrust in these creatures is entirely misplaced, this time. They don’t look like they want to exchange favorites and braid each other’s hair—they look like they’re ready for a seven course meal, eight, if they can find Mason drowning in his tears, probably stuffed in one of the lockers.

“ _Guys_ , they’re seriously not stopping to listen to your chitchat. They’re coming towards us. As in, closing the distance between them, dead people, and us, potential soul food. GUYS,” he presses, actually shaking Scott’s arm, like a sugar deprived kid in a candy store asking his mom for money, this time, with each letter he pronounces, but they seem more interested in talking over him. As in, actively not listening to the only human with no defense skills whatsoever.

“I can do it,” the youngest member of their pack sounds offended before Isaac just steps in front of him, gazing deep into Scott’s eyes, almost pleading, “Honestly. Let me.”

Boyd sighs loudly, rolling his eyes at their pathetic pity bromance fest (don’t get him wrong, Stiles shares the guy’s feelings about this pissing contest—with Scott as the prize—they’re forced to witness but sometimes he questions the dude’s—and this ISN’T about his default setting being ‘don’t trust anyone, ever, in any situation’—loyalty just a little. He means, it’s _Scott._ Everyone wants to impress him, even just a little, right?), as he pushes Liam aside, “How about I just go instead?”

Isaac shrugs all too eagerly, crossing his arms, “That’ll work, too.” Scott is about to interject but Boyd is already halfway over there before he even gets to open his mouth.

When Stiles turns his head, he finds Erica looking at him, eyebrows raised at his inability to get anyone's attention, “You’re pathetic, you know that right?” He dramatically fakes a smile before scrunching his face at her and trying to remember where he put his spare bat. Didn’t he put one in his locker? He knows for sure there’s one in his jeep, but since they’re surrounded by roughly fifty of them now, entering from the parking lot in a constant stream of sleepwalking zombies, facial expressions just screaming ‘BRAINS!1!!!11!’, he doesn’t think he can get to it right now.

Boyd doesn’t seem as worried as him. He grunts once, then growls as he charges the first one. He does pretty well, managing to fight off a few before one of them sinks their teeth into his arm. He doesn’t pay much attention to it, using the zombies as bowling balls, trying to knock down more until he sinks onto his knees, holding out his arm as his claws seem to retract automatically.

For a moment, there seems to be complete silence as they watch their sometimes shady, but still, friend, on the floor, defeated, as he’s being closed in on.

“He’s not immune,” Lydia’s voice brings them all back reality as she states what everyone was afraid to say, and it feels like a punch in the gut. Sometimes he hates how smart she is, so so smart. “He’s not healing. He’s not... he’s not getting better.”

 _Boyd doesn’t seem as worried_ , and that might’ve been his downfall. Silence. Then screams, screams of pain that etch onto his brain for the rest of eternity maybe, tears pricking the back of his eyes at the intensity.

“Boyd!” Erica cries out as Isaac holds her back, already pulling her back towards the locker room, which seems about their only option left right now, “ _Boyd_.”

“We need to get out of here,” Lydia yells, guiding them all backwards, and he'd practically follow her anywhere, so who's he to question her plan? “They’re multiplying by the second.”

“We can’t just leave him there,” Scott cuts in, voice desperate and Allison shoots him a pained look. She sums it up, rationalizing the situation, which to anyone else would sound cold, but they’ve been through this enough to know that she’s just saving their asses. “He wanted to go out there. He got bitten. There’s nothing we can do for him.”

Erica manages to escape Isaac’s grip as soon as the brunette finishes her sentence, running over to her best friend. One of the zombies tries to grab her shoulder and she knocks him back twenty feet before another one—that Boyd had thrown down mere moments before—bites down in her leg. There’s a small hiss of pain, nothing more, before she sinks down next to Boyd, broken as she puts his arm around her waist. There’s a futile attempt at trying to move him and herself away from the death eaters, before she looks over her shoulder, eyes flashing faintly yellow once more as she nods.

Allison seems to take this as a sign to get their move on, pushing Isaac to the back of the gym before doing the same to Liam and following them. He gets it— she wants to make sure the rest of them are safe—she can compartmentalize, asses the situation and make difficult decision like these for the greater good, because she was trained for this. Scott wasn’t.

“Come on,” Lydia whispers almost pleadingly as she pulls on his sleeve and he looks at his best friend before he sends her a look, telling her to go on. She smiles faintly, but it’s pained, squeezing his arm, but it’s too soft, and it seems to be some sort of act of support before she follows the others.

“Scott.” He hears Allison’s voice, and he knows, he knows the zombies are close, too close and they seem to be walking faster as before and his brain is kind of blurry and he can’t think straight and they do need to get to safety, but it’s Boyd and it’s Erica and it’s Scott. “Stiles. Hurry up.”

Scott swallows hard as he stares at Boyd and Erica, now completely being ignored by their unwelcome company, to try and make some sort of contact but she’s back to rocking Boyd in her arms as the dark boy’s fingers twitch at his sides, legs already limp. He's coughing up blood with difficulty.

“Scott,” Stiles almost begs and Scott nods once, slowly, before nodding again as they run towards the boys’ locker room, Allison already on the other side of the door, ready to close and block it as soon as they’re inside. They catch a final glimpse of Erica putting a claw to her own neck, a puddle of blood already having formed next the boy’s body in her arms.

It’s silent for a long moment, too long even. It feels like hours before someone finally says something, only the sound of tens of hands clawing at the doors filling their ears. There’s banging, too, like they’re just walking into the doors.

“I can’t believe that just happened. I mean, werewolves, I-I was just getting used to those actually existing, and then—then this, happens? This cannot be—” Mason stares at the floor as he speaks, stumbling on the words, and Stiles knows the guy’s in shock and the guy’s new to all of this and he should be more sensitive but he can’t seem to make himself care at the moment.

So he snaps. “Boyd and Erica are dead, Mason, I don’t really care about the status of your reality check right now.” Lydia flinches slightly at the tone of voice and he rubs her arm apologetically as he pulls her closer into his side. The situation they’re in seemed impossible fifteen minutes ago, and now they’re stuck in a locker room, zombies blocking their only two exits.

“Why didn’t you scream?” Mason tries again, this time looking at Lydia, almost curiously. She seems to tense up, just for a second before she shrugs idly, “Different supernatural frequency, maybe.”

Allison is tucked in between Isaac and Scott, leaning against a row of lockers, their shoulders all pressed together, which would be weird, if the circumstance they’re in wasn’t so messed up. Her voice is clinical, it doesn’t waver as she wraps her arms around herself but her eyes give her away. “She died how she wanted to die, and that’s next to Vernon.”

Liam finally speaks up, arms around his knees as he leans back against the wall, almost invisible, tucked into a corner of the room, voice audibly confused, “Who’s Vernon?”

There’s a beat, and another one, and then they’re all laughing just a little and some of the tension seems to be lifted. Hey, they might all die in a few minutes, but at least they’re having fun dying.

Then, Stiles sinks back against the wall, stretching out his legs on the floor, his smile fading as he swallows tightly, “Malia… She didn’t—she didn’t want to come.” He thinks about her, helpless in a classroom with a bunch of idiots, confused, mostly by the math problems, and also a little by some dead idiot trying to eat her brain. He smiles again, humourless, this time and he hates himself for not even considering how she was doing until now and he hates the situation they’re in and he hates how they can never catch a break and he hates—he just hates everything right now.

The room’s back to being deadly quiet before he even finishes his sentence, and Lydia—one of his best friends _Lydia_ , who feels a little bit like home—takes his hand in hers and squeezes. “I’ve seen that girl crack skulls with her bare hands for _fun_ , she’ll be fine. Trust me.”

Scott chuckles a little at that, and Allison smiles just a little and Liam sits up a little bit straighter and Stiles feels just a little better.

So, they were stuck in boys locker room for the time being. Nothing like the smell of teenage boy sweat and stinky socks to keep to hope alive. He didn’t _actually_ feel super peachy, sitting here, useless, not doing anything. He didn’t like to stop moving in times like these, because when you did, bad things caught up.

A quick summary of their time spent in Only Room In Close Proximity Filled With Lockers, Not With Anything Actually Useful Just, You Guessed It, Lockers:

**10:23 AM, day one**

They’re attacked by a bunch of dead lunatics hungry for brain, he keeps obsessively counting his fingers and they lose 1/4th of their pack within minutes

**10:38 AM, day one**

Someone gets the bright idea to lock themselves into a boy’s locker room, while their was a perfectly fine girls’ locker room five feet to the left that didn’t contain foot fungus, the smell of ball sweat and literally no supplies except for a few stray basketballs and a lot of dirty towels. Have you ever had someone spray you in the eye with fruity female hairspray? It ain’t nice, that’s for sure. Especially not if you add fire, winkey face

**11:07 AM, day one**

“Did anyone bring any food?” Isaac at least has the decency to be a little ashamed of himself for asking a question like that in a time like this, a faint blush creeping onto his neck.

It turns out Stiles has two and a half reese peanut butter cups in his pocket, Lydia has mints, Mason had some leftover jelly beans until he informed them he was a stress-eater and they were gone, and Liam establishes he has half a snicker in his jacket, but he left his jacket on the bleachers, in the gym, which they can’t get to, because they’ll probably die. So, thanks, Liam, thanks a lot.

**12:33 PM, day one**

Scott has been quiet for so long, Stiles is surprised when he hears his voice.

“Do you think… My mom?”

“They probably evacuated the town by now, I’m sure she’s safe,” Allison rationalizes, which is the rational thing to do really, but today doesn’t feel like a very rational day. Isaac adds, quietly, a cheery tone to his voice that sounds both fake and a little sad, if possible, “Yeah, knowing this town, the outbreak probably started in the woods, next to the, next to the nemeton, and, uh, came to this, to this school first. I’m pretty sure they serve the same purpose.” He lets out a forced chuckle that makes Stiles flinch.

Allison smiles encouragingly, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes, “They had plenty of time to evacuate the rest of the population.” She puts her hand on Scott’s forearm, emphasizing her words. “Don’t worry.”

He looks at her for a moment and then Scott smiles a little, and Stiles knows it’s fake, because he’s conflicted, because there’s his mom, and she’s his _mom_ , and then there’s Allison, who’s with Isaac, but smiles at him and comforts him and tells him it’s all going to be okay, and there’s his pack, who he can’t let down, who he has to lead and Stiles wants to tell him it’s okay to break down, that he’ll break down with him, but he can’t, they can’t. It’s always been surviving first and breaking down later. So that’s what they have to do now, what they’ll have to do. This is just another war, just another fight.

“Melissa is safe,” Stiles states, because he has to say it out loud to believe it. And Scott send him a look, “So is your dad.” They exchange a look, because it’s worse when you kind of only have one left, before the slightly tanner boy adds, voice awfully gleeful, “So, are all, all of our parents. Allison is—she is probably right. There were helicopters flying over the school hours ago, and we probably didn’t get the memo about the apocalypse happening outside because we were, we were locked up in here. So, so—they have to be okay, right? They have to be okay.”

Stiles watches his best friend’s grip on his thighs tightening, even scratching some of the material with his claws and he knows that Scott needs this right now, he needs to believe he’s right and everyone is okay and this is just another bump on the road they have to overcome to keep their town safe and not die and be happy.

“Right,” Stiles confirms, Lydia echoing him as she looks at him, seeing right through his act. He feels like as long as she doesn’t say anything, as long as she doesn’t say it out loud, doesn’t state the obvious—that logically speaking there might be a chance they’re all gone, that he’s been calling his dad for hours to the point the battery is almost dead, that the zombies must be coming from somewhere in this town—that it might not be real.

**03:51 PM, day one**

They’re all restless. Tired, broken, hungry, scared, all of the above and more.

“How did this even happen?” Mason is spread across a bench, staring up at the ceiling. The clawing and kicking at the doors stopped about an hour ago and it’s been awfully quiet ever since.

Lydia stares at nothing as she speaks, voice searching, “It makes no logical sense.” She clenches her jaw, looking up at them, “Remember the SARS outbreak? It originated in _China_. The CDC shut down international travel the second it was identified.”

“Right, flights were grounded and borders were closed, all travel was locked tight,” Stiles adds, pacing around aimlessly, rubbing his chin in thought.

Lydia nods her head, eyes widening in confirmation as she looks at Stiles—they only seem to be talking with their mouths for the pack’s benefit, seems like their eyes were usually enough. She explains, rubbing her neck like some kind of nervous tick, “At the time, only 43 people died in the _entire_ continent. Those 43 people could’ve easily been millions.”

“So, our question is why didn’t the CDC put the clamps down on something that happened in our own metaphorical frontyard?” Allison cuts in on the brainstorm session, sitting up and narrowing her eyes as she seems to mentally go over it.

Isaac opens his mouth and Stiles cuts him off, arms crossed as he pauses his pacing, “Center for Disease Control.”

Mason sighs loudly, trying to find answers on the ceiling, which honestly would be every useful at the moment, “I’m just surprised you remember something that happened in like, 2004.”

“2003, actually,” Lydia and Stiles both say at the same time, to which no one even blinks an eye, because it’s a well known fact that these two not only think alike, they are alike, tethered in some way, like mentally or spiritually. Scott is still not entirely convinced it isn’t supernatural, their bond.

“Look, it just doesn’t make sense from any point of view. The virus originated in New York, from what we know. How did it get here, in California, in less than a week?” The strawberry blonde shakes her head to herself, biting down on her lip as she runs a hand through her long locks, frustrated. Her question only seems to convoke more questions.

“So why didn’t, they or anyone do anything?” Sitting by Mason’s feet, it’s Scott, asking for the not-so-obvious central answer they’d all like to have, his hands clasped together in between his legs as he leans forward on his elbows.

“How was this not contained?” Allison seems angry, seeming to only having gotten up to kick a locker, jaw locked. Her anger isn’t misplaced, it’s just not very useful.

Stiles confirms Lydia’s rightful questions, wildly gesturing to make sure everyone knows about the importance of _his_ question, too, “Yeah, if not the CDC, where was the world health organization during all of this?”

“How did they not realize getting bitten by other people who used to make your latte or who you you used to babysit wasn’t a normal side-effect of any known disease and was…” Mason sits up on the bench, one leg on each side as he shakes in his head in disbelief, leaving the sentence hanging for the dramatic effect, but Liam finishes anyway, eyebrows raised, “Kinda seriously screwed up?”

They’re all quiet for just a moment, mulling it over. Because no matter how many questions they ask, they’re not getting any closer to answers. Especially not in a damn locker room.

Finally, Isaac pitches in, “Why do supernatural disasters always start in the US?”

The pack all simultaneously send him a look to which he responds with an idle shrug, although Stiles can’t help but hiss a, “Maybe you shoulda stayed in France.”

**07:32 PM, day one**

“What would you want your tombstone to say?”

It earns him a number of responses, like, “Stiles?” “What the hell?” “Can you shut the fuck up?” and “I want to live forever” by yours truly, Liam. Stiles doesn’t even think he’s talking impulsively and actually gave this serious thought before.

“Seriously. I’d like mine to say something like ‘He came, he saw and he went down like a boss’. Even if, realistically, I’d go down crying and probably exit this world, like, tripping down a staircase.”

“No one’s going to die, Stiles,” Allison huffs, but the corner of her mouth are lifted just a little so he knows she’s amused.

“No, no—just rhetorically speaking, since we didn’t even get to pick a senior quote for the yearbook yet. If we die here, what would you want them to say on your tombstone, since those will be our only legacy?” He raises his eyebrows, challenging his best friend, “Somehow I don’t think ‘son and friend, S. McCall’ wouldn’t quite sum up your life and it's extracurricular activities.”

For a moment, Stiles thinks they’re all going to ignore him or throw him outside as some sort of bargain deal, but then their alpha saves the day.

“‘You should see the other guy’,” Scott grins slowly from behind his knees, which he’s hugging to his chest. Stiles would’ve picked him for a cheesy quote about conquering battles from some army guy from the 1700’s kinda guy, but this kind of fits, too.

Almost simultaneously, before the apex predator gets to finish his sentence, the other’s start to pitch in.

“‘Don’t try Allison Argent’s cooking, ever’,” Isaac offers, earning a nudge from his girlfriend’s shoulder. Which apparently, hurts more than it looks like, as she almost knocks him over in the process.

“‘Warning: Don’t open before 2178!’” Liam grins like it’s the cleverest thing he’s ever come up with.

“I wouldn’t want mine to have my name on it or anything, just ‘I said, good day’ Like Fez, from that 70’s show because I used to watch that show like, everyday. Obsessively. It was a problem.”

Stiles can’t help but smile at that as his friends start discussing Fez’s country of origin as he turns his head to look down at Lydia. He lowers his voice considerably, he doesn’t even know why, it’s just something that happens between the two of them sometimes, “What about you, Lyds?”

“‘Please keep off the grass’,” she huffs, eyebrows furrowed together, “I don’t know, this is kind of stupid,“ she sighs, a little too sadly for his liking as she crosses her arms, leaning her head back on the lockers and staring at the ceiling, probably as an act of defiance or something.

“Nah, it’d probably be something smart in like, chemical elements or, latin. Not the classical one, but the archaical one because you don’t want to be basic.” She smiles just a little at his reply, turning her head to look at him as she shakes her head a little. The position she’s in gives him a pretty decent view of her cleavage, and in any normal situation—like as in if he wasn’t dating someone else and they weren’t chased by deadly crackpots and he wasn’t absolutely about to tear through the door to get the hell out of here—he’d be very excited about this, but right now—okay, they were _still_ boobs and they were awesome boobs so he’s not gonna lie—he looked, but just for a second and it wasn’t like he deliberately….

She narrows her eyes, moving her face slightly back to get a better look at him, “Did you just….?”

“No!” He exclaims just a little too fast, face flushing and she smirks. “Yes, you did. We’re holed up like animals, hiding from god-knows-what, and you…?”

“No,” he presses, avoiding her gaze, turning more flushed with every word he speaks, wildly gesturing his hands around, “Besides, even if, rhetorically speaking, I did, I’m totally suffering from PTSD and,” he swallows hard, stumbling on his words, “and, I, uhh, was already starving when I came to school this morning because I woke up, like, super late because you skyped me at like three am to tell me about an idea you had to just cut down the nemeton and they’re, they’re… here.” He shakes his head at his own ridiculousness, rolling his eyes at himself after his voice trails off. They’re here? So is Liam, but he’s not staring at his junk. God, he hates himself sometimes.

The only suitable metaphor he can come up with is that he dug a hole that he tries to climb out of, but instead keeps falling down, breaking more bones while it starts raining and he starts to drown, only for him to walk in on his Melissa and his dad having sex, which happens somewhere in the hole or when he’s like a ghost. Anyway, he’s screwed.

She pats his shoulder, her smirk widening as she’s probably imagining multiple ways to make his death come across as an accident, and he’s so, so screwed.

**12:17 AM, day two**

He groans as his stomach grumbles and tiredly, Lydia tells him to shut up, lifting her head from his shoulder lazily. “That was my stomach, FYI,” he whispers loudly, trying not to wake the others. Apparently hiding from lunatic cannibals (he doesn’t know how many more synonyms he can come up with, to be honest), made your bedtime ten o’clock. “Can’t really blame me for parasympathetic bodily functions.”

“How are they asleep?” She complains as she opens one eye to stare at Allison, sandwiched between her two boyfriends, which can’t be healthy, but you know, she’s sniffing Stiles shoulder, so who’s she to preach about healthy relationships. As if to emphasize her point, Isaac snores loudly and Scott pats his hand in his sleep to shut him up. Okay. At least Liam is lying, rolled up in a corner, like a lone wolf and not spooning with Mason—who is going to have serious back pain the next day from that bench—because she’s drawing the line at that. Not because they’re two guys, but because if anyone walked in, in would look conspicuously like they all hooked up.

(Besides, it’s not like they consciously always end up together. It just happens, they always seem to find each other, like they’re drawn to each other, like it’s just the natural thing to do, like it’s supposed to be that way. And he’s not one to argue, so she won’t either. Just because she’s a good person. Gotta keep karma on her side.)

“I have no idea, all I can think about is food. For a second there, I thought Liam’s cankle was a chicken wing and I was about to get up until I realized I had some pride left and I should probably try and conserve it before anyone catches me biting down into his skin,” he remarks, closing his eyes in exhaustion because he didn’t even get to have his usual midday nap with Malia, because she isn’t here and it would feel wrong without her. Also, they were trying to fix a hole in the door one of the zombies made with duct tape and used chewing gum at nap-o'clock.

She laughs a little at that, the sound vibrating against his shoulder as she slips a hand under his sleeve to warm it up. He winces a little at the coldness as he pries open his eyes to put his hand somewhere that wouldn’t make this profusely awkward, like her boob. Which, knowing him and his level of clumsy, was more than likely. Instead, he finds her bare arm—because, of course, Lydia was wearing a flimsy blue summer dress today, that in the name of fashion was super cute, but in the name of everything else, like fighting for your life (just from the top of his head), wasn’t—putting his much larger hand on top of it.

“You cold?” He frowns, concerned, which only earns him a slightly annoyed-leave-me-alone-already mumble, “Yeah.”

“Stiles,” she hisses quietly as he starts moving around carefully in order to pull off his hoodie. She opens her eyes to find him just doing that, sitting up and slapping his hands away from his zipper, moving the hoodie back over his shoulder and zipping it up as she informs him, “Don’t be an idiot. You’re not giving me your sweater when there’s one, two, _three_ werewolves here who can regulate their body temperature just perfectly fine.” As if to empower her statement, she demands for ‘any sort of warm article of clothing’ over her shoulder and without any questioning, sleepily gets thrown a leather jacket by Isaac,the actual t-shirt from Scott's back and a sock by Liam, which, for the love of his right state of mind, he won’t question.

“I—” he starts to protest, making a face as he peels the sock of Lydia’s thigh and throws it back into their youngest pack member’s direction.

She cuts him off as she starts to slip into the jacket, almost angrily, which is a real talent, if you ask him. She purses her lips, a face that’s permanently planted into his brain by now, “No, Stiles. Don’t be stupid, because you think it's the right thing to do, or that it's chivalrous and that I need saving. It won’t be as chivalrous of you when you die from hypothermia or pneumonia because you're _human_ and just because you have a penis, doesn’t automatically mean you’re better protected against sudden temperature changes than me.”

“I was gonna say you’re right but if you need an escape outlet, or come up with outrageous anti-feminist ulterior motives on my reasoning, that’s fine on me I’m always here,” he says as he watches her try and zip up Isaac’s jacket multiple times before he takes away her hands and does it himself. 

“I don’t need saving,” she repeats firmly, watching his hands move closer to her face and he chuckles, tilting his head just a little. “You’re starting to sound like Allison.”

“You’re face is starting to sound like Allison,” she mumbles, yawning as she settles back against his shoulder, hands wrapped around his wrist and he’s a little proud, because he totally taught her that multi-functional, never wrong ' _you're face_ ' Hashtag Clapback.

**02:01 AM, day two**

**♫** _big, big booty_

_what you got a big booty_

_shake that_

_big, big boot_ — **♫**

He manages to fish his phone from his pocket just in time as Lydia breathes out a ‘seriously’. He apologizes, figuring he just accidentally butt-played his favorite song, which just happens to be his ringtone. The odds of that would probably be bigger than a zombie invasion anyway. So what it’s Iggy Azalea and she’s a little problematic? Aren’t we all? JLo could collaborate with Hitler, and he’d—okay, maybe not Hitler, but like… his point is pretty clear.

There’s another bleep on his phone and his eyes light up as he slaps the side of his phone, until finally, a message appears. It’s time-stamped at 3:04 pm and he doesn’t have time to call his phone a piece of garbage, because it’s a message, from his dad. His dad, who can’t text for shit, but who’s alive, and able to not being able to text for shit.

DAD: _Stile$s, byn oW you must’ve arranged at Camp Rock. Ho;pe you safe. I mite be hErehere fo#r a little whi,l,e longEr. will comefind you. lov!.e you, son_

Unless, of course, there’s an actual Camp Rock and this is just some crazy kind of hazing before they all sing kumbaya around a campfire. Nah, his dad can’t text for shit.

He tries to reply but it goes dead as soon as he types out the word ‘SOS’ and he shakes Lydia quietly (because somehow she's always the first person he wants to tell everything to, although he convinces himself it's because she's the closest to him), but when finding out her phone is also dead, throws caution in the wind and just starts yelling for a phone, anyone’s really, even Isaac’s crappy android.

There’s only two phones still working, Scott’s and Liam’s, and he takes the latter one to try and call his dad since it’s only down to 88 percent, but it doesn’t go through. He finally sends a message, telling him about their situation, and is now just left to hope for a miracle. It seems to take an eternity before it finally sends, Lydia anxiously staring at the buffering bar over his shoulder and the confirmatory ‘message sent’ bleep has never felt so satisfactory before.

There’s actual hope now, hope that they won’t starve to death with mints as their deadrow meal in a high school locker room, hope that someone will come for them, hope that they can survive this.

**04:56 AM, day two**

There’s a loud bang against the door (the one leading to the actual high school hallway and not the gym) even though there hasn’t been anyone clawing at it since yesterday and then there’s silence. For a second he thinks he might be imagining things, and is considering going back at leaning his head against the locker, closing his eyes and imagining what kind of fast food he’s going to purge from the mall first thing when he gets out of here, but then there’s another bang.

Now he _knows_ he’s not imagining it because Scott sits up straight, and they exchange a look as the banging becomes more consistent, like someone’s trying to kick in the door. The window just shows a blurry blob of person, if you can even still call these savage flesh-eating beasts people.

The others seem to wake up from the sound too—Mason scrambling to huddle behind the shower wall; Isaac helping Allison climb on top of a row of lockers so she can attack from above if necessary; Scott and Liam position on either side of the door and Stiles decides taking the basketball, seeing as any kind of defense is better than nothing, shoving Lydia behind him. As if if it ever came down to it she wouldn’t kick a zombies ass while he fainted, and not the other way around, _especially_ with her new banshee powers and fight skills (that he’d rather not think of because it involved, probably shirtless, private training sessions with that creepy phoenix guy that worked with his dad and makes him see black and black alone).

The banging becomes louder and louder, until it’s deafening, the door starting to show cracks. He takes a deep breath as it finally seems to break down and he kind of feels like this calls for a kickass electronic track as background music, or some emo screamo. There’s one more loud kick, then there’s silence, and Scott counts down with his fingers to signal when to charge. He’s down to three when the door opens (read: falls down flat on the floor, causing a cloud of smoke to form like they’re in a tequila commercial in the mexican desert) to reveal—

Malia. _Malia_. MALIA.

Her clothes are torn, her skin dirty and there’s dried up blood down the side of her face and on patches of her exposed skin. She blows some hair out of her face before finally stating, “As if I didn’t hate coming to school bad enough.”

Malia? MALIA! He’s halfway over to her, to hug her to make sure this is real, but then, she steps aside and there he is.

The demonic hell beast, baby dick, republican, waste of superhuman tissue himself— _growling noise_ , Theo.

**06:04 AM, day two**

After a lengthy discussion on Theo with multiple arguments on his faith, which had come down to survival vs death. Arguments like ‘he saved me’ from his supposed-to-be-ally Malia; ‘he’s a person, Stiles, an actual human being’ from hero-complex is my middle name Scott; ‘we can’t just send him out there on his own’ Liam because he’ll just go along with whatever Scott says; some helpful French from Allison (NOT!1!!); a ‘I literally can’t seem to make myself care about whether he stays or not’ from Isaac, who else; ‘I say we’re so generous as to give him a basketball to defend himself and kick him out of the nearest exit’ Lydia, eyes blazing and voice never wavering, reminds him they’re the only two sensible people in this room and last but not least, in his opinion a fairly well articulated and nicely argued ‘HE TRIED TO KILL US MULTIPLE TIMES’ from yours truly—it was decided that he could stay, on the condition he stayed on his side of the room (the pack’s all against one row of lockers—by the exception of Mason, who refused to leave the protection of his shower wall—and Theo against the one directly across from it, all by himself, like he should be), with one of them awake and present at all times to keep an eye on him.

Which, wasn’t particularly hard to decide that would be him (Stiles Stilinksi, Designated Pscheo Watcher, you’re welcome humankind) since he wouldn’t be able to sleep with a PSYCHO serial killer who has killed MULTIPLE people as in MURDERED as in ENDED their LIFE and didn’t even have the balls to do it himself but used GENETICALLY SUPERNATURALLY MANIPULATED TEENAGERS to do it instead in the same room as him anyway. Whatever. He prides himself on not actually just killing the assclown himself.

He’s back next to Lydia (because each time he ends up asking himself, where else?), Malia’s head in his lap and her feet perched on top of Liam’s back (who came to lay down next to her since they have some sort of dysfunctional big-sis-lil-bro relationship he doesn’t ever feel the need question), staring burning holes into the dipshit’s sleeping face. Color him surprised that the guy looks so serene in his sleep. Damn, why do serial killers always get the murdering tendencies _and_ the good looks??

During the evacuation, Malia refused to leave class until she found her pack, to which the teacher literally responded with ‘screw you, I’m leaving’ and Theo happened to be in her class, probably plotting on who to change into a Frankenstein to take care of her murder. The door was blocked by multiple fallen beams and they finally managed to escape through the ventilation system. Malia, sniff champion thanks to her years in the woods, managed to catch a scent that smelled vaguely like Isaac (ha! he knew he stank) and ‘those fancy french curly buns’ (croissants) but stumbled onto what she thought were ‘hipster vegetarians nerds’, at first (so she _does_ listen to his rants), but then Theo informed her that they were probably worse than that, if possible. A forty-five minute fight broke out before apparently one of them had Malia in a death grip, just about ready to turn her, a fingernail already digging into her temple and Theo CONVENIENTLY managed to get her out and they laid low before CONVENIENTLY being lead to the pack’s hide-out which was previously _ACTUALLY_ CONVENIENTLY serial-killer-free.

Of course, his friends are all stupid and went back to sleep immediately, like letting a savage like Theo into their temporary home, giving him the keys and offering him tea and cookies before allowing him to look at their collection of guns and leaving him alone with them (metaphorically speaking then), just short of telling him where to preferably stab them in the back (not metaphorically speaking, he wouldn’t be surprised to find a knife between his ribs from the back if he ever did go to sleep)—wasn't bad enough. Except for Lydia, naturally. (And Allison, a little, fists balled in her sleep ready to attack any motherfucker who dared to come for her. She’s always ready to go.)

He takes a tiny break from his hole-glaring into Raeken’s face to look at Lydia, to find out why she’s so quiet and passive, as she barely whispers, stammering and searching, “I should’ve, I should’ve screamed. Why didn’t I scream? I mean these, these things are dead _and_ death and I didn’t scream and Boyd and Erica died and we could’ve, _I_ could’ve done something.” She nervously twirls her ring, a pretty silver one with a emerald stone, in between her fingers, wavy strands of hair falling from her plaid and into her face. She doesn’t look at him, voice distraught, like she’s on the verge of breaking down, not far from erratic. “This is, this is my fault. I have been thinking about this for a while and wrecking my brain, and I thought about the multiple scenarios, all of them, that this could’ve played out into and it’s my fault.”

He looks down at Malia with a sigh, brushing some hair from her face before running his finger over a cut that hasn’t entirely healed yet, drawing the conclusion that it must’ve been deep. Everyone’s still asleep for all he knows, but he doesn’t feel like lowering his voice when he says, “Shut up.”

“It’s true, Stiles. Isn’t that my only talent? Being able to predict dead, supernatural deads. I should be able to do that, shouldn’t I?” She sounds just a second away from being pissed off, like she feels like he isn’t listening, but he doesn’t care and he always listens.

“Right now, we don’t know anything. Who’s to say this is even supernatural? This might as well just be a virus, or maybe the entire town is playing a seriously unfunny and screwed up joke on us, but the point is, we don’t know shit,” he huffs, now burning a hole in _her_ face by refusing to look away even though she’s obviously uncomfortable by the intensity in his eyes. He looks back at Malia, running his fingers over her forehead carefully as he adds, “And it’s never your fault, Lydia. You were never alone in this. So if you want to blame yourself, blame me, too.”

It's true, they're a team, they always have been, like two sides of the same coin, so she doesn't get to do this.

She doesn’t say anything for a while and he can feel her eyes on his hands and he thinks she might be mad but if she is, she doesn’t show it, settling down next to him and leaning her temple against his arm.

**03:28 PM, day two**

Liam practically slaps him in the face with his phone while they’re both peeing, which causes it to almost fall into his urinal, and Stiles, barely managing to zip up his pants, almost asks him why the hell he’s checking his texts _while_ peeing before he reads the name on his screen  ♥ SHERIFF ♥:—he pauses his reading to send the younger boy a look. He shrugs unapologetically, “What? I like your dad. He helped me out of that hole once, remember.”

He’s about to respond to that with ‘yes, the one Theo put you in, who’s by the way, now small-talking his way into their trust only to try and suffocate them alive with more dirt if he gets so much as a lil’ tiny bit of a chance, because yoU LET HIM’ when he remembers that they’re in a zombie-apocalypse and that text might be their only rescue.

So, again, he starts reading ♥ SHERIFF ♥:—only to send Liam another pointed look, who just urges him on to read the rest.

♥ SHERIFF ♥: _soN, &,.frinds N Isaac Lahey_—

“My dad knows me so well.”

Liam manages resist almost bodychecking him in the wall, fingers curling at his sides, growling a “Shut up and read it already!” like a dragon would breathe out fire. A lil’ too I.E.D for Stiles’ liking, but he’s kind of right. He should read the damn text.

♥ SHERIFF ♥: _soN, &,.frinds N Isaac Lahey_ _. ever;yOen evacuated t.o Camp Rock 2: Summer Jam. execpt m,e + parri$h and retaLIATIONn team. LAST chooper [helicopter emoticon] @#$% 12:00 AM on roofie . hoPe youre a_

The message cuts of there, since his dad probably hit send accidentally like he does a lot (like sending his colleague's wife ‘i enjoyed you’ instead of ‘i enjoyed your pot roast last night, do you have a recipe i could steal, lol’ that one time). Stiles takes a minute to wonder why the hell his dad would think this was the appropriate time for emojis, but the only conclusion he could come to was ‘why the hell not?’, before he pulls Liam back towards the others by grabbing his shirt by the collar.

“Tonight, at 12, there’s going to be a chopper on the roof. I won’t say it’s our last chance to get out of here, but it is.”

Isaac scrambles to his feet, pausing his counting of the tiles to pass the time, to ask, “What? How? Are you sure?”

Are sarcastic replies distasteful during apocalyptic disaster? Color him not giving a motherfrick. “Well, technically my dad typed ‘roofie’, but since I don’t think he’s going to try and date-rape us by poisoning us through the ventilation system, I think it’s safe to say he meant roof.”

**11:43 PM, day two**

Scott decides it’s safest to leave as close as possible to the pick-up time since they can’t risk having to wait an hour in a wide, open space with Satan-knows-how many undead ready to rip off their skull and stick a straw in their brain. Lydia calculated it’d take them five minutes to get to the roof under normal circumstances, normal circumstances being them being able to walk through the hallways without having to look out for possible not-people trying to murder their actual-people asses, so she adds extra time for the likely sneaking around and eventual Buffy-the-zombie-slayer-ing.

“We could just wait it out,” Mason offers, hands shaking visibly as they stand next to the door Malia slammed down earlier, staring at the opening which Scott had barricaded with a row of lockers after her arrival and was now destructing.

“I nominate Theo to go first,” Stiles bites, hugging a basketball to his chest. What? It makes him feel safer, okay?

Theo scoffs, crossing his arms in protest before Malia rolls her eyes, pushing him forward and over the threshold. Stiles carefully sticks his head through the door opening, checking for both sides before following after his girlfriend, Lydia holding on to his arm tightly, her hand interwoven with Allison’s, Mason not trailing far behind. Scott, Isaac and Liam taking the back position.

And thus, their relatively safe time in the locker room ends. He doesn’t know if that should be a ‘luckily’ or an ‘unfortunately’ story just yet. He’ll keep you posted.

.

The first thing he notices is that beside their careful footsteps, it’s quiet, and it’s definitely possible the zombies left to look for prey they could actually reach, but that’s not what quiet usually means in horror movies, and Stiles has seen all too many of those.

They reach a staircase in about seven minutes after moving at an excruciatingly slow pace, having passed walls covered in blood and who-knows-what; torn and complete items of clothing lying around everywhere; books scattered on the floors and chairs and desks destructed in the hallways like there’d been a tornado. Which, regardless of it’s effect, would’ve been slightly better than a zomb-o-calypse.

“We’ll check it out first, wait for my sign,” Malia notifies them as she follows Theo up the stairs, and he hates him so much, he doesn’t even have time to be proud of his girl taking the lead. Then his other girl (he will not comment on this, it’s just.. it’s the way it is, okay?) takes his hand as she presses her body further back against the wall, clammy in his as their eyes meet. They’re the only two who seem to be thinking of the fact that if they don’t reach this helicopter, that they’re, without question, zombie-food. She’s scared, but so is he.

"Stiles," she breathes, fearful eyes huge and her hand sweaty in his. He turns his head to look at her, raising his eyebrows in anticipation for whatever she's going to say but then there's a voice coming from upstairs and she shakes her head. "Nevermind."

“Guys, come on! It’s clear,” they hear Malia whisper (as well as she can since she only knows the volumes 1) loud 2) louder) from the first floor. He's still looking at Lydia though—wondering why she had said his name like _that_ , only to dismiss it ten seconds later—but then she squeezes his hand and this jump-starts his legs.

Just as they start running up the stairs—which was his incentive since he’d rather be chased right now than miss that chopper—they hear a loud smack from Theo and Malia’s way and his legs move just a little faster, pulling Lydia along. They reach the top to find Theo being held to the ground by a Zombie 2.0—someone he remembers being on the lacrosse team before being kicked off because of steroid use—his legs kicking against the floor as he struggles to breath. Malia is on top of the zombie’s back, but the huge thing doesn’t seem particularly stressed by it, hurling her against a row of lockers behind him.

Scott rushes to fight of the zombie Isaac following right behind him as he rushes over to Malia, helping her back onto her feet. Everything’s going so fast he doesn’t even notice it when there’s suddenly a claw digging into his shoulder and throwing him down on the floor. Zombiezilla wasn’t the only pumped up zombie around, at least five more appearing from behind the corner. They’re faster, almost smarter even than any of the zombies they encountered beforehand and soon there’s a full fleshed fight breaking out between Scott’s pack and the Zombiesteins.

The Great Battle Of Beacon Hills High, Or Really, Just One Of Many doesn’t start out particularly well in Scott’s pack’s favor, when one of the zombies reaches down Mason’s throat before ripping out a piece of flesh, so he’s choking for air, before biting down in his arm. He vaguely hears Liam scream for his best friend before Isaac decides to pull him back, reminding him that it’s a lost cause since his windpipe is most likely crushed as he pulls him around the corner disappearing from their view.

Stiles can’t do anything but stare at Mason’s body on the floor—his muscles contracting heavily like some kind of seizure—and the sound of his own erratic heartbeat is the only thing he can hear echo in his ears. Malia is pulling on his arm though and when he turns back to face her, he sees Lydia is talking, hair falling wildly in her face as she gestures for the stairs leading up to the roof. He nods, still not hearing anything else beside the blood rushing to his head, but understanding they need to get there, fast. But luck is definitely not on their side.

Exhibit (A), one of them zombies breaks out a piece of wood from a door that Scott avoids getting put through his chest by a hair, only for the zombie to then (B) decide to jam it into the next person's body instead, which happens to be Allison’s leg, shows that the continuation of The Great Battle Of Beacon Hills High, Or Really, Just One Of Many isn’t particularly successful either. Allison looks down at her thigh, completely shocked to find it speared. This makes her mad (understandable, really) as she lets out a yelp of pain, yanking the piece of wood out of her flesh and stabbing it through his eye. Which evens the score for team Scott.

Still, his stomach hurts as Malia growls at an approaching zombie, throwing him on the floor and stepping down on his skull before Lydia fights off one with her banshee powers, sending him off flying into a brick wall and he sees Mason disappear in the corner of his eye as they pull him towards their next destination, the roof.

By the time they’re upstairs, it’s 12:01 AM and Liam and Isaac are already in the chopper, the latter one’s hand sticking out to help Lydia in. His back is turned to the roof when he hears the tall guy breath out a harsh and helpless ‘no’, Liam, tears still in his eyes from losing his best friend, turning his head away from the scene behind Stiles.

Then Lydia screams Scott’s name and everything seems to go in slow motion as he turns around to watch a zombie tear his best friend away from holding Allison up. Most of the sound is drowned out by the chopper’s rotors, but the sight is enough to make his heart sink to his stomach.

The curly haired brunette hisses from pain as she unexpectedly needs to support her weight on her injured leg while Scott engages in a fight with the zombie, holding his head over the edge of the roof as he contemplates killing him (he’ll have a discussion with him about not being able to kill people who are already dead, later). She starts to limp towards them when a tall, buff one comes from the stairs, from behind Allison. Just like that, without even giving her a chance to fight, to defend herself, he grabs both of her shoulders and bites down into her skin. He watches her gasp, either from pain or for air, as she fall down onto her side, clutching at her shoulder.

Theo appears from behind them and drives his claw through the zombies back, pulling out his heart before throwing him back off the stairs. (Totally Unimportant Sidenote: Damn, he’d hoped he’d been killed along the way and he doesn’t care if it makes him a bad person, either.) Scott appears back at Allison’s side after throwing his target over the roof, as he sinks down onto his knees to take her into his arms allthewhile Theo runs over to the chopper, settling inside.

“We need to go, right now, there’s about ten more coming and it’s like they keep getting bigger,” he yells, ready to sign for the pilot to take off when Stiles strikes the side of his outstretched arm. Under normal circumstances, he’d be no match for Theo’s werewolf superpowers, or, you know, his actual human muscles, but the unexpected element of it helps him. It takes him a moment to collect himself, before he orders, “We wait. We wait for Scott.”

“Look, Stiles, I know you don’t like me and I know he’s your friend but this heli needs to get it’s ass of this building _right_ now—”

“I suggest _you_ shut the hell up before I throw _your_ ass of this building,” Lydia cuts him off, jaw clenched as she wipes a few stray tears from her cheeks with her wrist roughly before she adds, awfully calm in a taking-none-of-your-shit-no-more-manner, “We wait for Scott.”

“We don’t leave anyone behind,” Malia agrees, as if rehearsed, “Ever.”

So, they watch. They watch Scott rock Allison back and forth, tears cascading down his face as they have a small exchange. They watch as she reaches out weakly to grab onto his hand, that’s holding onto the wound on the junction of her shoulder and neck, trying to take the pain but knowing it’s no use. Stiles swallows hard, not being able to witness such a personal and truly sickening moment as he turns his head away. Lydia clutches onto his side tightly, and he doesn’t hear them, but he can feel her sobs. Isaac is sitting on his left, but he gets up slowly, staring at the scene unfolding in front of him.

“It was always going to be him, wasn’t it,” he says, defeated, and Stiles has to try really hard to make out the words. It doesn’t sound spiteful or angry, just… Really, really sad. He doesn’t know if the question was intended for them to hear, or maybe if it was just for Lydia, although she seems unable to respond right now. He isn’t Isaac’s biggest fan, and he doesn’t enjoy kicking people while they’re down but he feels like this is something he needs to hear, deserves to hear. Somehow he thinks lying would be worse, wouldn’t make it better, so he goes with the truth. “Yeah, I think so.”

He looks at Isaac and they have a silent understanding before suddenly, there’s Scott. Hands shaking, covered in blood as he climbs onto the chopper, completely silent. Then Stiles realizes what he had to do, that he didn’t just need to leave her behind, he needed to… He needed to uphold the Argent code.

This has to be a dream, this can’t be real, this can’t be how their lives turn out. They were supposed to… It doesn’t matter. They were supposed to live. Nothing else besides that really matters. He counts his fingers again and again, until Lydia grabs them and clutches them in between hers, and nobody says anything until the chopper touches ground.

.

**02:09 AM, day three**

It doesn’t matter how much zombies they kill, because the score will never be settled. He makes a mental note to write down their names, the names of the ones they lost, the names of the ones who’ll never get to grow up and become who they were meant to be.

 

_Vernon Boyd_

_Erica Reyes_

_Mason Hewitt_

_Allison Argent_

.

A big banner on the campground reads out ‘Camp Delta 013’ and they’re only informed it’s located somewhere along the West Coast, it’s exact locations classified. (Totally Unimportant Sidenote #2: he thinks a big banner spelling out it’s name wasn’t exactly stealthy if you’re location was supposed to be super secret, but, hey, what does he know)

It’s around two AM he guesses, it’s still dark outside, when they’re approached by a two guys in green hazmat suits. He misses his dad, he wonders if he’s still okay. He wants to say he misses Allison, but it’s too close to him, it’s too fresh, all he keeps seeing when he closes his eyes is her being grabbed by the shoulders. He wants to grieve, he wants to worry, but the truth is, they don’t have that luxury. Not now. Not in the midst of what has to be the weirdest fucking thing he’s ever been in the midst of.

They’re put in some sort of cell, most of the walls made of black metal and on one side using safety glass, which is ironic, because one werewolf claw and they’d be out. But he has to remind himself they can stop running, that this was their end-goal all along, until they set a new one. And he doesn’t know what he would want right now, besides to go back to his life before this all happened.

Scott settles down on the floor in corner, sinking his head down into his blood-covered hands and Stiles sits with him for a while, talks about Melissa and his dad, trying to distract him (how do you distract anyone from dead?), and then even Malia (“Stiles, what can I do?” Malia doesn’t look at him as she speaks, her eyes huge as she watches her alpha sit motionless, a single tear trailing down his face and for the first time he notices how tired she looked, how defeated she must be when she thought she could leave these people behind just a few months ago, only to find out she could never, while they leave her instead.

“Just—just hold his hand, okay?” Malia nods as she sinks down next to Scott, taking one hand in between both of hers).

But, Scott, he’s just frozen, in shock, broken in a million tiny pieces. It’s Liam’s turn when she leaves, and he settles in next to his alpha, his eyes red and puffy from crying and Scott puts his arm around him after a moment. He figures Liam can offer him what Stiles can’t right now, which is experience. He wasn’t the one who just lost the single most important person in his life, Liam was, and he doesn’t get to be jealous about that.

So, Stiles checks on Isaac instead, because it's the Scott McCall thing to do, who’s just been staring into space since they left that roof behind, maybe forever, and finds he’s as fine as he could be, considering the situation. He’s a little put off by the fact him and Scott aren’t grieving together (if anyone in the world was feeling what Scott was right now, it was Isaac), but he won’t question their reasoning behind it for as long as he lives. He can shut up about few things, but this will definitely be one.

He doesn’t see Theo anywhere, and frankly he doesn’t care if he jumped out of the heli or if he’s dead in a ditch somewhere, because a part of him just thinks it’s shady as hell he showed up just _after_ Allison was bitten to somehow save the day. He has enough conspiracy theories to last a lifetime, so decides to leave it be for at least another twelve hours before he starts pinning things on Theo again.

Finally, he goes to sit down next to his tiny strawberry-blonde friend who’s settled down next to the glass and observing the camp, slumping down against the wall and immediately closing his eyes, hoping to relieve himself from some of the exhaustion. For one single moment, he gets to experience pure silent bliss, then—

Then, there’s yelling—a lot of it—people running past their own personal cell from hell, AKA quarantine (he likes fresh air, okay? and like, food, which they have, a lot of it, and he hasn’t eaten in like, three days, so...and air. he likes air), and they don’t know what the hell is going on until they hear multiple gun-shots, and you know, that one zombie running into their protective glass, trying to break it down. This one looks less zombie-like and more human-like, which makes it ten times more creepy. It looks angry, though, and pretty determined to reach them.

Scott pushes both of them back, and orders the rest to follow his lead. Stiles is about to go into a rant about Scott’s illusory superiority just because once upon a full moon he got bitten by a werewolf, but then the Z-rex, growls, showing off his impressive teeth and he decides he LOVES being barricaded by four of his friends.

“Stiles?” Lydia reaches out to grab onto his forearm and he carefully looks over at her, taking in her pale skin, the scratches on her collarbone and arms, the world-weariness in her eyes as she tries to speak, “I know you said we’ve fallen subject to Murphy’s Law a lot, which is probably true, but I’m going to one-up you and say our lives are starting to accede to Finagle’s corollary.”

“Anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment? That corollary?” He huffs, looking back at the zombienator-from-hell and wondering if it could see itself right now, it would know how ridiculous it looks running into glass like a maniac, “Sounds about right.”

Not taking their eyes off the Zombie what’s-it-now-3.0-question-mark (if they’re going to get anymore upgrades, them zombies going to beat Apple for Most Unnecessary Quote Improvements Unquote In Eternity at the Fuck My Life Awards) they start to walk backwards, until their backs hit the wall. Which, surprisingly, doesn’t offer too much comfort, since their cell isn’t a honeymoon suite at the Ritz and the glass is now only twenty feet away.

“I wish I had my baseball bat,” he mutters under his breath as they watch starts cracks starting to show in the safety glass. The other’s are going over (read: fighting) defense tactics (a fight he thinks Malia is winning), but somehow he finds more comfort in his same old bickering with Lydia than something that could possibly save all of their lives.

She raises her eyebrows, tilting her head slightly at the ridiculousness of his statement, lips pursed, “I seriously doubt that would help us in any way, ever.”

“You say that now, but wait until I get my hands on one of them—OH MY GOD!” He screams, as a large piece of glass falls onto the floor as he scrambles further into the wall, turning around and pressing his face against it. He forces his eyes closed as he prays for this to be over. He just really doesn’t want to die.

“My knight in shining armor,” she remarks sarcastically but it doesn’t sound too sincere, reaching out her hand for him to grab once more. He takes it and offers her such a weak ass smile, he’d pull a Kanye for Worst Actor of The Year at the Razzie Awards. She smiles back. There’s one more squeeze before the glass gives in and breaks.

.

Ten minutes, two flower pots (because these people have time for decor apparently), their only remaining cell-phone (he was trying to defend himself, okay), five stitches (four (!) in him) and a foot later, they’re back in quarantine. They’re put in container that’s exactly the same as they one they were in fifteen minutes before, only these walls are a creepily serene white.

So, you wonder... why a foot? Well, it’s a rather long story that pretty much just comes down to Isaac making his own makeshift cure along the lines of the five-second-rule when Malia got bitten in her foot and dedicated to cut it off with an axe. A footless Malia stunned on-campus doctors by her lack of blood loss and Stiles by hugging anyone else beside him and her father for the first time, since, ever. Isaac, to be clear. He half-expected her to punch him—okay, maybe not so half, more like whole-y. He’d even asked the meds for an ice-pack in advance and everything. But it worked, and she is alive and she is not a zombie and that's amazing.

Scott, of course, saved the day by killing the rabies infected zombie coming directly for them, but Stiles can see all of it taking it’s toll on him. He used to never kill, because it wasn’t necessary, because there was an other way. Now there wasn’t, but he knew the alpha still blamed himself, for not _coming up_ with a different way, especially not since Allison…

Theo’s back. Which just further enhances his homicidal tendencies. He wanted to hit something, which wasn’t a natural longing for him. Usually. He got mad, sure, he got absolutely pissed, who didn’t, but he rarely ever felt the urge to just, _punch someone_. He talked, he talked a lot, it was how he coped. He wasn’t violent but this situation and quarantine (he argued with hazmat medics for over thirty minutes on the logic in putting them back into a cell while everyone on camp had come into contact with the infected and all they gave him was a BS excuse on exposure time) and Theo being in here with them and _everything_.

He’s pacing around while Theo tells his bullshit cover story ‘they grabbed me, sedated me, I couldn’t escape, blah blah’ even though Stiles is a 100 percent sure the psycho is working together with the direction of this camp, maybe one-upped his dread doctors into zombie-docs.

“Why did they take you again, you precious, tiny, little, special snowflake?” Stiles cuts in finally, not even trying to hide his bitterness. Scott sends him a look, but he ignores it.

“They found—they said they found inconsistencies in my blood,” he reveals, stammering. He seems wary nonetheless, anxious to explain himself, “Listen, Stiles, I know you don’t trust me, but I had to do it—”

“Neither do I,” Lydia scoffs with her arms crossed over her chest, showing of the remaining stitch, which was on her wrist thanks to a shard of flowerpot that Liam smashed over a zombie’s head, “neither does anyone else with even so much as three functioning brain cells.”

Stiles frowns as he stops moving, staring his nemesis down to read his face, “Wait, what do you mean you _had_ to do it? What did you do?”

Theo licks his dry lips, shrugging nonchalantly, “They were observing them in the same room they were trying to stick a drill into my head, I saw the chance and I took it.”

Liam looks at him in disbelief, eyes narrowed threateningly, “You stole their blood and created a super-formula that makes you even more incredibly strong and invincible like some kind of were-zombie?”

Stiles pats him on the back dryly as if to say ‘nice try’ before turning back to the traitor among them, “You set loose the infected?”

“They were about to find out I was a werewolf, hell yes, I set loose the zombies.”

“People on base died, Theo,” Scott informs him, eyebrows furrowed together and Stiles resists to urge to yell out a firm ‘yas, Scotty, yas’. “Innocent people who were just looking for a place to survive.”

“They are holding us _hostage_ just because we made eye-contact with a few of those deadwalkers. What do you think they’ll do to us if they find out we’re supernatural?” Damnit, he had a point. But still. Any point Theo Raeken makes, regardless of it’s level of truth, is a point that should be ignored. Stilinski’s law. Booyah.

Isaac scratches the skin behind his ear, frowning, “I’m confused. You did it because you were afraid they were going to lock you up like they were already doing in the first place?” He only glares at the scarf-wearing werewolf in response.

“ _You..._ freed the zombies that ate my foot?” Malia asks, just to clarify. Theo nods, hesitantly, and the short-haired girl grimaces, fists balling up.

Stiles smirks all-too-maliciously and eager, “I’ll get the ice-pack!”

. 

They’re finally given food on hour three in their new cell, although it’s impossible to tell the exact time. No one has any idea of how long they’ve been at Camp Delta 013. It’s just dry rice and some beans, but he inhales it like curly fries.

If he hadn’t been hungry, starved, famished and completely sleep-deprived—he’d known something was up.

They’re knocked out within minutes ( _something_ hella shady), only to wake-up without Lydia. He first notices because unlike the last couple of days, there wasn’t a weight on top of his shoulder and some strawberry blonde hair somehow in _his_ face as soon as opened his eyes.

He’s the last one to wake, the effect probably having worn off sooner on the others’ because of their superior supernatural-ness. Whatever.

“She isn’t here,” Scott confirms, as if he’s reading his mind. He looks tired, worn. Stiles sits up straight, wide awake as his heart pounds in his ears, steady, like, _Lydia, Lydia, Lydia_.

“They won’t open the door,” Liam sighs, even though he knows it’s a futile attempt, since Stiles already over there, banging down on it. “Where is she? What did you do to her? Let us out!” His vision is blurry as he pushes it, punches it, kicks it until he’s out of breath and his knuckles are bruised. A string of sentences pass his mouth, most of them along the line of ‘If you touch her, I will do horrible things to you’.

“I could try and break it down,” Malia offers sadly, but her voice tells him she wants him to reject it and although everything in him screams yes, he can’t let her do that. He pants, running his hands over the sides of his head before connecting them behind his neck as some sort of attempt at trying to calm himself and help speed up his rational thinking, “No, no, you can’t. If they, if they find out what you guys, what you are, who knows what they’ll do.”

“Fuck,” he exclaims, kicking at the door once more, making Isaac wince. All he can think of is how scared she must be, all by herself, God-knows-where. What if she’s hurt? What if they’re using her as bait or some sick experiment? What if she’s… She’s Lydia, she’s smart and beautiful and incredibly _good_ and she’s his… She’s his.. He shakes his head to himself, before deciding, “I’m going to kill them. I’m going to find them and I’m going to kill them.”

No one says anything, all collectively choosing the floor as their focus point.

He throws a plastic plate with a few spare beans at a camera hanging in the middle of the ceiling, a lousy attempt at trying to catch their attention. “You hear me? I will come for you!”

.

His dad arrives days, weeks, months later—Scott ensures him it’s soon, a couple hours at most—after she got taken, but every minute he doesn’t know if Lydia’s safe feels like an eternity.

His dad gets them out, even gets them privileges (which shouldn’t have been too hard since the camp is a quarter-dead, quarter-injured and half-abandoned, thanks Theo!). They’re taken to the weaponry tent, are shown their entire arsenal and all get to pick a weapon. He touches a gun and it accidentally fires off into Liam’s leg (next to four stitches, he’s now also rocking a black eye), so he picks up a baseball bat and practically glues it to his hand. Seeing his dad gives him some sort of feeling of happiness, but the false sense of security lasts about two seconds before he’s back to being incredibly pissed off. They’re not entirely unlucky: Melissa was at the same camp, along with Malia’s dads (yes, because Peter Hale seems to be annoyingly immortal) so was Lydia’s father, not that she knew. Liam’s family hadn’t made it, yet. There were a few others he recognized there, but most of them he didn’t, more of them were missing, which he'd rather not think about.

“We searched the whole camp, twice. She isn’t here, Stiles,” his best-friend informs him, after he went on another rampage, throwing over a week's-worth of water in one of the tents. He's just so.... Angry. Scott tentatively puts one of his hands on the freckled boy’s shoulder, “We did… We found out something else.”

“What?” He snaps, jerking his shoulder away from his touch and he doesn’t mean to be this way, especially not around Scott out of all people, but he feels on edge, like a part of him is missing.

“There were a few, well, they called them mad scientists, who weren’t agreeing with the way things went around here. They rebelled by drugging us without permission and taking Lydia because they want to find a cure, not wait around here to die. People here are convinced—they’re convinced there is no cure.” Scott took over leading the shrinking community within ten minutes, with Stiles is sure was a real nice speech about ‘ _fighting for what you want, not being able to hide forever, the lack of an unlimited supply of back-up camps_ ’, but he didn’t have the interest to memorize, honestly. He was kinda zoning out the entire town. "They didn't want to risk it. The mad, mad scientist took matters in their own hands. I guess."

“How did they even know she…” He clenches his jaw, defeated. God knows what they were doing to her right now. His fingers curl against his side.

“School files, transcripts. Since everything is digitized these days, they only had to hack into...” his voice trails off, sensing Stiles isn’t interested in the specifics. Scott smiles and God knows he means it too, because there’s no fake to Scott in anyway, “I know it’s hard, but it’ll be okay. Knowing Lydia, she’ll whip up a cure in twenty minutes and come back to us to rant about how they ruined her shoes by dragging her through the dirt and—”

“Yeah,” Stiles cuts him off, not feeling like humoring him right now by pretending he cares to hear about Scott’s faith in fairy-tale endings as he sinks down in a chair. He looks down at his hands as he listens to Scott sigh before eventually he disappears. Finally, he reaches down his pocket and takes out a ring that he found lying in the grass during their first search-party. It’s a small silver band with an emerald stone. It’s pretty. It’s Lydia’s.

In the dirt beside it were the initials ‘BH’ and he wasn’t an idiot, so he knew it meant she went back to Beacon Hills. Now he just needs to decide if he’s going over there guns blazing, or if he should stay here with his pack, or what’s left of it, even though deep down he knows that isn’t a real possibility. Really all he’s deciding is if he’ll tell his dad or Scott before he leaves.

He just—every time he closes his eyes all he sees is her face. The crinkles beside her eyes when she smiles and means it, too. The dimples! The way her long hair cascades down her shoulders in waves. Nose scrunching up whenever he says something she doesn't agree with, ready to fire back as soon as he shuts up. The way her lips purse when she's annoyed, or thinking, or breathing, really. It might be her face's default setting, resting purse face (or maybe he gives her lips too much thought). How the light reflects in her hazel eyes and make him feel like everything is possible. But seeing her face like that, and _knowing_ , knowing she isn't safe, just makes him feel very... Angry.

Malia limps over to him after he doesn't know how long, interrupting his inner-debate, and he knows he doesn’t get to ignore her, he doesn’t get to be that guy but the problem is he wants to be, just for a little. She seems to understand, and doesn’t talk until he looks at her.

“You look like crap.”

He huffs, just a little amused, as he sarcastically retorts, “I _feel_ like crap, too. What are the odds?”

“I recently learned the difference between something,” she says, awfully calm, as she puts her hand on top of his wrist, using her index finger to draw shapes on the back of his hand distractedly, “Between loving someone and being in love with them. And I don’t think you love me, Stiles." Not like you love Lydia. It's heavily implied, although she doesn't say it.

“Malia,” he starts but wraps her fingers around his hand, squeezing, and he realizes this is a long way from how she used to show affection, mainly involving bodily harm, “No, it’s fine, I... I should’ve realized a long time ago that maybe, I don’t love you like that either. I don’t love you like I love Scott, or like the way I love my dad, but I don’t love you like you do Lydia.” He hears the uncertainty in her voice, like she isn’t quite sure how to explain it herself.

“I do love you, you know?” He says, lamely, as he finally takes her in, _really_ looking at her. She lets go of his hand to touch the side of his face before leaning in to kiss him one more time, it’s just a peck, but it warms his heart in the way it feels to be comfortable, like when you see someone after having missed them for ages, and it's still the same. Like he knows he'll always have her in his life.

Her eyes are glazed with tears as she forces as smile on her face, “Human love is weird. There’s so many shapes. It’s confusing.” He chuckles just a little, and she breaks out into a watery laugh before, with some difficulty, picking up makeshift crutch and (very reluctantly) getting up with his help.

They share one last look, and she nods, and it feels kind of final, before she hobbles back towards the tent’s exit.

“Stiles?”

“Yeah?”

“You're a dipshit."

"Thank you?"

"You're a dipshit, but don’t be a dipshit that leaves without saying goodbye, okay?”

“Okay.”

.

He has a really long discussion with Scott, who doesn’t want him to go, thinks it’s too dangerous, says he needs him, begs him not to be this reckless.

“I’ll come with you.” (Deep down, he knows. He knows Stiles could never not save her. The same way he knows he would go, too, if he could.)

“They need you here, to guide them,” Stiles retorts, sighing, and it’s already close to a week since he last saw her, “Nobody needs me.”

Scott frowns, seems offended but unable to respond well, “You’re needed. I—I, the people here, you’re smart and—”

“Not like they need you,” he doesn’t skip a beat before he clarifies, “Not here.”

Scott seems like he’s ready to protest and he knows there’ll always be more reasons he shouldn’t go, but only one reason matters, and that’s the one he should. It’s to save Lydia.

“Look, I’ll go. I’ll look for her and if I can’t find her, I’ll come back,” he promises, even though they both know he’ll never stop looking, will never give up.

“You can’t go alone.”

“I’ll take Isaac.”

Scott tilts his head, eyebrows raised.

“Fine, I’ll take Liam.”

It’s silent for about three whole seconds, three whole seconds Stiles gets to think it might really be different this time, three whole seconds he gets to believe Scott won’t fight him. Then, the tan boy’s face sags, like he’d been trying really hard to hold himself back and Stiles closes his eyes in defeat.

“I don’t get why you just won’t let me come with y—”

“You’re all they have now, Scott. You’re a true alpha. That doesn’t just mean you’re there to save them from supernatural harm without anyone ever even finding out what you did for them, what you sacrificed, like usual. You didn’t just turn into one when you were bitten. You were _always_ a true alpha,” Stiles responds, offering him a not-entirely-painless smile. “You’re my brother, Scott, and I’d follow you anywhere and if you asked me to stay, really asked me, I would, but right now, I’m asking _you—_ you have to let me go. Please.”

Scott holds his gaze just a little longer before he gives in, “Okay, you can take Liam, but please be careful with him. He’s—”

Stiles huffs humored, some things never change, “Still learning. I know.”

“I’d offer you more manpower but Isaac’s rebuilding the permanent homes with most of the healthy, and Theo’s _Theo_ and Malia’s still relearning to walk, let alone I send her out into battle and—”

“Scott. It’s fine. I get it.”

The slightly shorter one throws his arms around the lanky, awkward one, squeezing tightly. He mumbles something into his shoulder that resembles something like, “...Be careful.”

“Please, you know me,” he remarks sarcastically, smirking as he pats his back but Scott doesn’t seem amused when he pulls back. Stiles narrows his eyes. “You just remember not to—”

He rolls his eyes, “Trust anyone.” He opens his mouth again, only to be cut off by his best friend again. “Especially not Theo.”

Stiles smiles, and it’s genuine, and a little sad, “I’ll see you soon.”

“I’ll see you soon.”

.

Apparently, his dad doesn’t feel quite the same as Scott since he, totally unapologetic and beyond reason, throws him back into quarantine without any warning whatsoever.

“Dad!” He yells, banging on the protective glass, his face red from anger. “Dad, you can’t do this to me!”

Up until that point, the sheriff had been able to ignore his furious rantings and insults, but it’s now he turns around, eyes rimmed red from exhaustion, half of his sleeve ripped off because of who-knows-what. “I can, and I will, because I am your father, and not for once, not once, Stiles, you thought about what you are doing to _me_.”

“Dad, you _can’t_ do this,” Stiles argues, arms limp against his body for the first time since he woke up, his own dad having drugged him and thrown him into a cell. He’s never felt this helpless. "This isn't about you, or, or me! It's about—" _Lydia_. It's about Lydia. Damnit Dad, way too cut him off during the important part of that sentence.

“You’re going to get yourself killed,” he replies without skipping a beat before challenging him, veins in his neck thick from anger, “What are you going to do? Huh? You’re 152 pounds of pale skin and frail bones, and your only defense mechanism is sarcasm. What. are.  _you_. going to do?” Way to throw his own quotes back in his face, nice move. Dick move, but still. 

“I hate you,” he spits, because all he sees is red and all he sees is pain and all he sees is Lydia and he needs to get out, out of here, to her, he needs to. He _needs_ to. Why doesn’t anyone understand? It's become a Basic Survival Need For Stiles Stilinski by now: food, water, shelter, clothing, Lydia. Especially Lydia. The rest was optional by now.

“I’m fine with that,” the sheriff shakes his head slightly, adding one more thing before he marches out, “Because that means you’re alive and you’re safe and I can live with that.”

Finally, he notices Scott in the corner and his eyes fill with hope. “Let me out,” he directs at him and Scott looks up to meet his gaze, before slowly shaking his head. “I can’t.”

“Scott!” He slams his hands down on the glass, helpless, angry, confused. “You said, you said I—it’s _Lydia_ , Scott. Lydia.” He’s not even pleading, he downright begging, ready to fall onto his knees if he thought it would help. He doesn’t care if he’s acting like a crazy erratic person, maybe he is, when it comes to her.

 _It's Lydia_. He doesn't know how many more times he has to emphasize this, how many more ways he could say it. It's always been her, and it'll always be her and that's enough, that's enough for him. It might not be enough of a reason for them, but for him it is.

“I know,” Scott yells, kicking against a metal disposal can, it’s contents flying all over the floor. It’s the first time he’s ever seen him break down like that. “I know it’s Lydia, Stiles. I know! And it was Boyd and Erica who we watched die, and it was Mason who choked to death and it was Allison who _died_ in my arms. I know.” He swallows hard, tears in his eyes as he presses his hands against the same glass as Stiles, right above his head. “ _I, know_. But I can’t lose you, too.”

“Scott,” he yells again as his best friend starts to turn around, “Scott! Please!” Then he’s gone.

Why is the entire universe including his best friend and his own dad working against him? The worst part is he can’t even blame them for it. He understands. He does. He knows the consequences and he knows his own limits and he knows there’s a bigger chance that he’ll die trying than him walking out of there alive and succeeding but he accepts it. Hell, the chances a million monkeys typing words on a typewriter for a million years and any of the words spelling out ' _In this universe Stiles Stilinski wins_ ' were smaller than him actually winning this fight. He accepts it all, everything, because it’s Lydia. It’s Lydia and he can’t live with himself if he doesn’t even try.

So he settles on staring at the floor in hatred and exasperation, decides he’ll refuse to eat until they leave him out, or he’ll like start rambling like a crazy person (which isn’t too far from normal) and fake a seizure or something so he can escape. He's about to start frothing when there’s a small tap on the glass, that he almost discards as his own delusions, until he sees Liam waving at him like an idiot, sporting a big smile, teeth showing and all.

He sighs loudly, rubbing his face to keep himself from rolling his eyes, not at all in the mood for pep talks and pleasantries. “Liam… please leave me alone.”

“Oh, really?” Liam’s grin widens even more if possible, reaching the shit-eating level with ease as he twirls a key around his finger, “Are you sure about tha—” before accidentally hitting himself in the face with it. He rubs the side of his nose with a small pout as Stiles presses his face against the glass, eyes huge. “I love you so much right now, bro, you don’t even understand. Like I could literally kiss you right now, and I will—” Liam opens the door and Stiles hugs him quickly, placing a kiss on his cheek with a loud smack. The younger boy grimaces and starts wiping at his cheek as he locks the door back up again.

“Wait, does Scott know about this?” Stiles raises his eyebrows as he sees the grimace transform into a dreadful and slightly pained expression. He visibly tenses before quietly and lightly shaking his head.

Stiles smirks, putting his arm around his shoulder and patting him on the chest, “Liam, you rebel! I never thought you would stand up to your daddy! This is amazing. I would take a picture of this moment if—”

“Shut up, okay? Or I’ll lock you right back up in there,” Liam cuts him off with a seriously annoyed expression, eyebrows furrowed together in fury as he balls his fist. Stiles watches the key snap in half, one part falling down on the floor. Stiles knows he shouldn’t, but he can’t help it, “Well, I’d like to see you try.”

“I’m not a baby. I only helped you because Scott always tells us to do the right thing and for him saving Lydia right now isn’t, but maybe for us it is,” Liam informs him casually, shrugging as he stares at his feet. Damn. He looks up at Stiles with a challenging look, eyes narrowed, “But I can just go over to him and tell him I made a mista—”

“No!” He yells quickly, eyes widening in terror, “Just… Follow me. I’ll get us out of here safely.”

Liam sends him a look that makes him believe that if looks could kill, he’d been six feet buried deep right now and Stiles rolls his eyes, in response, although in hindsight he can admit that was a little condescending and he was mostly a useless piece of crap unless there was actual detective work necessary. “Right. _You_ take _me_ out of here, cowboy. 

. 

“Ywou’re a shwitty drivwer,” Stiles remarks, flashlight in his mouth to shine down at the device in his hands.

“Don’t blame me, blame this frickin’ truck.”

“Oh, sorry, how inconvenient for you. Next time when we’re on the run, I’ll try to steal a more suitable car to fit your needs, _honey_.”

It’s silent for a few minutes before, a little insecure almost, “It’s not even that bad.” 

“You’re a worse driver than Malia, at least she has a trauma.”

“Do I need to remind you I don’t have my license yet?” His grip on the wheel tightens, his chuckles turning white. It’s like he’s a different boy when he’s angry, like he didn’t just hug Scott goodbye, only to run back into his arms to hug him _again_ with the bullshit excuse that he was going to hunt for food with some army guys. Not that Scott opposed strongly to the bromantic embrace, but still.

“I don’t have my license yet,” he mocks in a whiny voice, twisting a screwdriver around into an ancient device. “Driving isn’t hard. Try fixing a dead, fifty year old radio while _you_ ’re driving, that’s hard.” Engineering hadn’t been his strongest suit before, in the 21st century, let alone with a machine from the stone age—but hey, maybe he shouldn’t have thrown their last phone at a dead bubonic hell beast’s face, like that was going to keep him from getting eaten alive.

As if on cue, Liam hits the break so fast that Stiles practically flies forward, dropping the radio to steady himself against the dashboard. “Way to go, it’s totally broken now. For real. What the he—” He turns his head, to look at what in shit’s name has Liam’s eyes the size of Texas, when he sees an army of zombies in front of them. “Have you ever reversed a car before?”

“No,” Liam panics as he starts pulling on the stick like he’s playing a game at the arcade. A small bead of sweat drips down the side of his face. “Do I look like I have reversed a car before?”

“It’s like driving, only then backwards,” he retorts, looking down at the other boy’s foot anxiously, as he makes several ‘hurry up’ motions with his hands, “Step on the gas.”

“I’m trying, it’s stuck!” He yells, pulling on the stick as he pushes his foot down on the accelerator multiple times in a row. The vehicle makes a bunch of scary, useless noises, all the while not moving an inch and conveniently giving the infected extra time to reach them.

“Step on the damn gas already, Liam!”

The sophomore halts all his movements, turning his head to look at Stiles, who looks at him with complete and utter fear, “I’m _trying_ to step on the damn gas but you’re _screeching_ in my ear and it’s NOT WORKING, DICKHEAD!”

There’s a loud crashing noise on top of their roof and they look at each other like they’re in an episode of The Office before Liam swallows hard and Stiles breaks out into the biggest panic sweat he’s ever been in. They sit there, frozen and in complete horror, contemplating what would be the best way to die—eaten by a zombie that can apparently jump ten feet into the air, or squashed to death by an entire herd of slightly less talented zombies.

“TANDOKU DE WATASHI NO YUJIN O NOKOSHIMASU!”

Zombies… that speak… Japanese? That was a new one.

The creature on top of their roof jumps onto the hood of the truck with a loud smack, hair sweeping into the wind like a shampoo commercial, katana in hand. The zombie is not only speaking Japanese, in possession of some seriously good hair products and carrying a katana, it’s wearing a freaking bandana.

Kira. It’s fucking Kira!

She engages with a loud warrior cry, stabbing at least three at her first try before she’s thrown onto the dirty ground. As she tries to kick one off of her, she tilts her head slightly to look at them in the vehicle, “Uhm, guys. Hi. Would you mind, trying to start to truck?” She elbows one in the face, jumping back onto her feet as one approaches the car from the side, breaking the window. Stiles stabs him in the face with his bat’s butt-end, which seems to help, as Liam finally springs into action, restarting the ignition and stepping down onto the accelerator as it finally sweeps backwards. He turns it 180 degrees, and Stiles acts quickly, throwing open his door as she starts running towards them.

“How the frack did you get here?!”

“You don’t even want to know,” she sighs out of relief, chest heaving up and down. He now notices her hair is a little asymmetrical, chopped shorter than it was before on both sides. “Oh yeah,” she blushes, reaching up insecurely, “I cut it off. They kept pulling on it and it was in the way and it just—seemed easier. Does it look okay?”

Liam leans over Stiles to hug her tightly, grateful as hell, “It looks bad. _ass_.” Stiles joins in, pressing a kiss to the side of her head, “And we’re not just saying that because you just saved our butts.”

“Nai kyo akuma!” She exclaims, reaching for her katana as she pushes them back into their seat in one swell swoop and stabbing another Undead, apparently not dead enough, about to create teeth marks in Liam’s face. "Wanai kyō."

Stiles nods appreciatively, raising his eyebrows, “Twice.”

. 

Kira informs them on how she made it all the way from Japan to LAX in a small, tiny little aircraft that was last used during world war 2, and then how she fought her way over to Beacon Hills. Supposedly there’d been outbreaks all over the world within the same time period, and luckily, she found it just as suspicious as him so he wouldn’t get branded as the crazy, skeptical conspiracy theorist once again.

She arrived here a week or so after they left, had been looking for them ever since with no luck until she saw some men take Lydia into the direction of the hospital a couple of nights ago, and then the day after, again. Like they were just going to work from 9 to 5. She’d been planning on observing tonight to come up with an attack plan.

“We’ll get her safe,” Kira promises at the look on his face, reaching over to squeeze his hand for a moment in support. He smiles a little, but can’t look at her as he does. “I know.” The hope that she is alive is practically the only thing keeping him together right now, and he already feels like a hammer hanging from a single thread.

“Scott.. Is he?”

“He’s fine. Practically taking care of an entire village back at camp with Isaac and Malia.”

The sigh of relief is unlike any other one he’s ever heard. She holds on to the door handle tightly as Liam drives down a bumpy backroad as she looks at the side of Stiles’ face. “Boyd?”

He shakes his head, slowly, as he swallows tightly, hands placed on the dashboard to steady him.

She stares at her hand in her lap, fiddling with some loose strings on her shorts. “Erica?”

He pauses, then, again, shakes his head, biting down on the inside of his cheek harshly.

Kira takes in a sharp breath, licking her dry lips, as she carefully looks back at her friends to gauge their reactions, “...Allison?”

Stiles’ jaw clenches, Liam’s knuckles turn white from how tight he’s holding onto the steering wheel and Kira decides that’s enough questions for now.

. 

“You know what I keep thinking of?” Stiles asks as he takes his baseball bat from under their seats, before slamming the door shut.

“On how hard you’re going to make-out with Lydia once you get to her?” Liam rolls his eyes as he leans down to tie his shoelaces.

“No,” he huffs, narrowing his eyes, “Okay. Maybe.” He clears his throat, his neck flushing, “But also, about this quote from my Economics textbook—”

“Dude, you’re seriously thinking about school right now? Homework can wait.”

Kira laughs, knocking her shoulder into Liam’s, and it’s a good laugh, “Yeah, I think if you don’t hand in on time, they’ll actually buy your excuse for once.”

“No,” he repeats, scoffing, as they make a start for the back-entrance, “I keep thinking about how the CDC has literally done jackshit about this entire situation, to not even mention how the World Health Organization has been handling this and I’ve been going over it and _over_ and I keep—it keeps coming back to this one quote. It’s, it’s ‘institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution’.”

“You think it’s a marketing strategy?” Kira raises her eyebrows in thought as she checks to see if the path’s clear before she kneels down next to a wall, and signals them to wait behind her.

“I think it was a problematic project that went horribly wrong before they figured out how to fix it.”

She shrugs, lips pursed in agreement, “It would make sense. There’s overpopulation so you create some sort of virus that kills some and is curable in others, only to then make billions selling this cure.”

“You think Adam and Eve were put onto this planet by alien lizard people on a spaceark called Noah, and one time you argued for 85 minutes on why you thought yoga was created by satanic worshippers. I think you have a problem,” Liam interjects, voice skeptical as he pushes his back against the wall and waits for Kira to jog over to the door. He then follows, Stiles on his heels, grip tight on his good ol’ bat.

“Whatever, all I know is that, whoever did this, is _seriously_ f—” Kira shushes him, pressing a finger against her lips as she nods for Liam to listen carefully. He shakes his head, indicating there’s no one behind the double doors just before Kira kicks part of it in, somersaulting for another few feet before coming to a stop in a squatting position.

“I’m all for the dramatics, but I’m pretty sure that door was unlocked,” Stiles remarks cynically as he opens the other part of the door without a hitch.

“Where would they take her?” Liam asks absentmindedly as Kira stuffs her katana back into her belt loops, which honestly still blows his mind, and his voice is so much sadder than before that Stiles knows he’s thinking about his step dad, who worked here, and mom, without having to ask.

“Well,” Stiles starts, eyeing the place that weirdly enough still looks the exact same way, as if he’s just over here with Scott to grab some dinner with Melissa, “Lab seems the most obvious, then again, if they’re testing on real-life-dead-people, the psych ward has containment rooms they wouldn’t be able to get out.”

“I’ll check the lab, you guys take the psych-ward?” Kira finally offers after a moment of contemplation and Liam’s head snaps around to face her. “What? _No_! We can’t split up. I have seen enough horror movies to know that nothing good ever comes out of a group splitting up!”

She smiles, and it’s genuine, voice soft and comforting, “This isn’t a horror movie and no one’s going to die. I have my katana, I trust in you that you _know_ how to control your powers and Stiles, uhh, uhm, Stiles, he has, uhm—”

He rolls his eyes, shaking his head lightly to himself as he decides to save her from any further embarrassment (his, not hers), “I have you. And my bat.”

“See? We’ll be fine,” she takes a deep, nervous breath as she rambles on, scarily chipper, “I have to live so I can tell Scott leaving for Japan was the worst decision I ever made, which includes that time we put sushi on top of a pizza, which was seriously disgusting, guys, I’m warning you, don’t ever try it. And you, you have to live so you can become the best beta out there and finally apologize to that girl that keeps covering you in gum and, _Stiles_ , Stiles has to live so he can finally get his act together and be genius with Lydia and win a bunch of fields medals and, and nobel prizes together.” A decisive smile stretches over her face as she brushes imaginary dust of her shorts, taking another deep breath, “We’ll have to be fine.”

She turns around to make a start for the lab on the fifth floor when she halts, hand on the railing. “Not that I’m saying our entire lives depend on our romantic relationship’s status, or something, like-like we’re defined by love or something, because, because that’s not-not what—okay, time to go.” She stammers, pointing a thumb over her shoulder, lips pressed together in embarrassment before quietly disappearing on the stairs.

He believes her, because just thinking about it gives him hope (and he wants it, he wants it so bad. He wants nothing more than to know Lydia is okay and that’s she safe and loving her just seems to pale in comparison to her just being alive. That’s all he needs, that’s all he asks) but the realistic part of him takes out a note (that he wrote back at quarantine quarters with Liam keeping reluctant watch) out of his back pocket and sticks it behind the glass on the door leading outside before his friends can sees. This is of course all assuming his theory that zombies can’t read is correct. Research pending. After a second he rushes back, and scribbles some extra lines down before sticking the pen back into the pocket of his hoodie. Satisfied and slightly pushed by a “ _hurry the hell up_ ”, he quickly follows behind Liam, hoping sincerely to be able to stuff the note back into his pocket later.

.

“The psych ward? Out of all the departments, it had to be the frickin’ psych ward? Which is like the creepiest part of this hospital, including the morgue and the food in the cafeteria,” Liam says to no one in particular since he knows Stiles is probably off not listening anyway, taking careful steps forward, trying to not to alert anyone (dead/alive/crazy or all three) of their presence. “Just for your information.”

“Well, if we’re gonna die,” Stiles responds absentmindedly, hyperaware of his surroundings (he didn’t come this far to die now), “I’m glad it’s with you.”

“You don’t mean that,” Liam narrows his eyes as he looks over his shoulder at his older friend.

“You don’t say,” he chuckles just a little, tightening his grip on his bat as he holds it up in a ready-to-strike-any-damn-second-position. “Nah, I’d be happy to die next to you, bro. It beats out dying alone by at least one tenth of a mile.”

“Ha-ha,” he deadpans, just about to open his mouth to exit more witty slander when one of the crack-zombies, they’d only encountered once before, appears out of nowhere and grabs him by the throat. Liam is knocked against a glass case, breaking skin everywhere, before he’s slung across the hall, headfirst slamming into a wall. He doesn’t open his eyes, which causes some mild panic on Stiles’ side.

“Liam?! Liam, are you okay?!” What kind of mess… “If you’re going to wake-up, do it now. Not after he rips my head off, I like my head. Save my life so you can borrow my x-box whenever you want for the rest of eternity. _Liam_.”

The crack-zombie now starts to make a move for him, backing Stiles up into a corner. He looks left, right, down, up—but there’s now way out. As it closes the distance between them, he holds his bat up threateningly, swaying it around, but it snatches his bat out of his grip and in half with one hand like it’s nothing.

Stiles swallows hard, looking up at the creature from steroid hell, “I’m sure there’s a way we can both walk out, uhm, excuse me, drag our feet out of here satisfied?” It just growls in response, which figures, really. His life is not an action movie where the good guy wins the fight at the last possible moment, he’s not the hero of his this story, and no one’s there to save him.

As a last resort, he reaches down into his hoodie and takes out the pen, sticking it into the crack head's eye, but he doesn’t even flinch. Hindsight-bias or not, he kind of felt all along that might not have been great idea since the zombie just seems more pissed off.

There’s no here to save him and… This is it. This is the part where he dies.

.

“Stiles.” He swears he just heard someone call his name. _Ow!_ He grunts lowly, because now he _knows_ someone just called his name and slapped him in the face, hard. Prying open his eyes slowly and carefully, all he sees is strawberry blond hair surrounded by a halo of bright light.

So he _definitely_ died. Might as well go back to sleep.

“Stiles,” she hisses, grabbing him by the remainders of his shirt and slamming him into the ground, “You didn’t die, you asshole.”

He peaks through one eye, carefully and his head is pounding.

“Open your eyes,” she commands, her hands still on his chest, “I thought you died, I mean I found that stupid letter, like anyone in this world didn’t notice we were attacked by zombies.”

“Lydia?” He clarifies, because his brain is too fuzzy to think and he doesn’t understand how he’s here, and she’s here, and she’s talking to him.

“Who the hell, Stiles? Who the hell breaks out of quarantine and into a sea of zombies that want to kill your ass? Who? Why? Is this your dumb hero complex playing up? Jesus,” she groans, aggravated by stupidity as she leans back onto her legs, rubbing her forehead--it’s now he sees she’s covered in dried up blood, clothes torn and hair a mess, sticking to her forehead.

It’s been two weeks. Two damn weeks. Shit, he missed her.

“I had to find you,” he croaks out, trying to sit up in the process, but the look on her face (a weird combination of fury and worry) and the hand on his chest tell him he shouldn’t even try. “You left a sign.”

“You’re so stupid, you know that? I wanted you to find it so you’d knew it’d be safe, not so you could risk your life, and _Liam_ ’s, to save mine.” She sighs, rubbing her face with her hands before she stops, looking at him, endearing almost before it turns into full-fledged anger again, “Besides, I was down here making some professor my bitch while we, or should I say, I, tried to find a cure.” Of course, of course she fricking was. She’s Lydia Martin. What else would she be doing? He was a fool for every thinking she wouldn’t be able to handle herself.

“Ah, two weeks and you already replaced me?”

She huffs, shaking her head slightly as she pushes against his arm, not apologizing even when he winces in pain as she continues, “They didn’t want to hurt me, they just wanted my help. Although that didn’t prevent me from literally and figuratively stabbing one in the back with a broken erlenmeyer when Kira bursted in.”

He’s practically panting, because apparently passing out is tiring, which doesn’t make sense, but he’ll get to that later. “Lyds, if you insist on keeping me in a horizontal position, can you at least just, lean down a little?”

Her brow furrows as she does what he asks, simultaneously running her hand down the side of his face and neck to check for injuries, “Are you hurt?”

He shakes his head, not being able to help a small smile flickering through as he reaches up with one hand to run his thumb over her lips. She swallows, unconsciously leaning down further. He leans up slightly, leaning on his elbows before she can do anything about it and connecting their lips for just a second, because apparently kissing takes a lot of effort and he doesn’t have a lot of energy.

“So, did you? Find a cure, I mean?”

“This might surprise you but, there is no cure against death, unfortunately.” He knows what this means, he knows the terrible repercussions this brings. All of the people they lost—they’re really gone. If they haven’t been killed yet, they will have to be. It’s a terribly sad conclusion, especially when he thinks of his friends; Allison, Erica, Boyd, even Mason.

“Hey, what’s important right now is that we’re alive, okay? We’re alive. And,” she takes in a sharp breath, like it pains her to say it, “I love you, too.”

He smiles at first, and then it widens and stretches across his entire face as she blushes just a little. “Shut up.”

“Why don’t you make me?”

“Okay, I take it back. I cannot believe you just used that line on me.”

He manages to raise his eyebrows as he keeps a straight face, “Is it _really_ a ‘line’ if you already got the girl?”

“Just… Stop talking,” she groans a little before leaning down to press her lips against his, this time more firmly, and for the first time in forever, he has no trouble containing his word-vomit whatsoever.

.

“An organism is unable to return, even partially, to a previous stage already realized in the rank of its ancestors,” Lydia shifts her head on Stiles chest so she can properly look at Kira and a confused Liam, all barely squished together in the truck on the way home (wherever that is, for now just camp 013), and since she can’t not be just a little snarky, “Translated for a _kindergartener_ , since zombies evoluted from us, mankind, although with a little help from some genetic modification, they are unable to return to their previous form—human. Evolution is many things, but not reversible.”

They’ve been in the car for eighteen hours straight, having to stop on certain infected zones in order not to be stampeded by entire herds of zombies, and having to avoid other zones with looters who took ‘the purge’ a little too seriously. A chopper would’ve been much easier, but that’s life.

“You know what they say in engineering—” Stiles starts and Liam cuts him off, slightly bored, “No, Stiles, _no one_ knows what they _say_ in engineering because nobody cares about _engineering_.” Lydia finishes for him anyway, “ _Improvement means deterioration._ ”

“So basically, there is no cure and people aren’t going to stop being bitten and our only choice is to eradicate them completely before they eradicate us?” Kira summarizes and Lydia nods in agreement, eyebrow cocked. “But like you might’ve noticed, they don’t go down easy. I have yet to come up with any sort of suitable mass weapon that we could get our hands on or put together with the materials we have.”

That’s right, no bestiary lying around with a magical solution.

Liam huffs, rolling his shoulders back as he shifts in his seat, trying to get comfortable squished in between Kira and Stiles, “Don’t go down easy? I got my head slamdunked against a wall without him even doing so much as _trying_ to hurt me.”

“They take on the form of the human host. Although not technically hosts, since they’re not planning on leaving without the popular side-effect that is death, it kind of works like that, in a way,” Lydia answers, frowning in thought, sitting up so her back is against the door.

“How does that work?” Kira turns her for a second to look at her before looking back at the dark road and Liam adds, a much more obvious confused look on his face, “Yeah, how _does_ that work exactly?”

“Sooo,” she drags out, smirking as she fingers Stiles’ collar, “if for example they bite someone like _Stiles_ , they turn into the relatively slow zombies, not too smart either.”

Stiles pokes her side in mock offend but she ignores him with a small smile, slapping his hand away and continuing, as she thinks of a way to put this in understandable terms, “If they bite someone like Brett, from, from lacrosse, remember him?”

Liam nods in confirmation and Kira does the same, only a little too eager as Lydia goes on, “So if they bite someone like Brett, who has amazing muscle density, like a _literal_ wall of muscle—”

"Hey, I have excellent biceps!" Stiles interjects, offended and his friend-turned-girlfriend-question-mark rolls her hazel eyes, not too impressed, “Sure anyway, the zombie will be much stronger. It’s like the one you and Stiles encountered yesterday, like the one that Mason..." Her voice trails off as she shivers slightly at the thought. Stiles rubs her back in comfort and she sends him a small thankful look as she slips her arm under his hoodie and behind his back to carefully pull him closer.

“If the host’s body is too weak, so will be the zombie is basically what you’re saying,” Kira decides to break the silence and Lydia just nods, small confirmative smile on her mouth, lips pressed together.

For a while it’s silent, Kira is content driving and Stiles is content holding Lydia, his chin resting on top of her head (he still can’t believe they’re both alive and she’s in his arms and he gets to love her and he kind of wants to call her beautiful in 47 languages and kiss her all the time).

Liam seems to be mulling it over in his head, eyes focused on the dashboard before he finally opens his mouth, eyes narrowed slightly in confusion, "So what happens if they bite somebody like Dwayne Johnson?"

Lydia and Stiles both simultaneously turn their head to look at him, who just shrugs casually, unapologetic. Stiles inhales deeply, tiredly, "You better run."

.

“Punch me already,” Scott finally says after spending an awkward, tense fifteen minutes at a pack meeting in which Lydia explained her findings, confirming his money-hungry-CDC-international-governmental-instances conspiracy theory suspicions and most of them listened.

It took them three weeks to get back to camp. After a small detour because of a shopping centre filled with hungry zombies and being forced to hide for a week in a crappy old motel on the side of the road (he knew this was the apocalypse and he didn’t get to be picky but he still firmly believes they should’ve continued driving for at least another half hour to see if there was a Hilton or Four Seasons around, okay) because of it, they got lost and had to find their way back. Which wasn’t as easy as they’d thought. Especially not when your brain is fried from a constant ‘fear for your life and of those around you, might pee my pants, heart might give in from too many palpitations, goosebumps are the way of life’ kind of state. (Which wasn’t _as much_ of a mindfuck as coming back to find Malia on top of Isaac, like literally asleep on top of him, clutching onto his arms and him seeming totally fine with it. He’d compare it to a needy toddler, if he didn’t think there was even just a little sexual reasoning behind it. He’s not entirely sure how that happened and he’d care about Isaac always going for Scott and his’ sloppy seconds, but he’s not entirely fine with calling Allison or Malia sloppy seconds—out of respect and pure self-reservation since he isn’t too keen on losing a sense, like his eye—so he’ll let it slide.)

“What?” Stiles looks at his best friend in confusion, hands on the table in front of them as he had been looking over a map of the area lying in front of him.

“Just punch me, I can take it, and it’ll hurt for a second, but then we can go back to normal,” Scott says shakily, like the frail teenage boy’s punches would actually be able to hurt him. Then again, he knows Scott doesn’t care about physical pain, he experiences emotional pain as much worse. Stiles stares at him in amusement as he puts his hands loosely on his hips, just when he’s about to answer, Isaac cuts in.

“Punch me instead,” he steps in front of Scott, closing his eyes as if he’s awaiting the blow.

“Just not the face,” Kira jumps in quickly, like he’d even be able to cause permanent damage, which just earns her a devious glare from Malia, although he isn’t interested in the ‘why’.

And the prize for biggest suck-up of the zombie apocolypse of the early 2ks is Isaac ‘I love mexican penis’ Lahey. Stiles rolls his eyes at him as he states with a smirk, “I’m not going to punch anyone.” Looking Isaac over one more time, he adds, “Although, if the offer’s there…”

Isaac fakes a small chuckle, eyes narrowed as he shoves Stiles’ shoulder. That is so going to bruise, he thinks as he tries to keep a straight face as to keep some of his dignity left.

“So we’re cool?” Scott asks earnestly as he looks at the slightly taller, but skinnier boy.

Stiles grins as he hugs him, because like he said, he understands—he just didn’t particularly agree. Still, Scott is his brother, and there wasn’t any malice in his decision, he was just trying to do the right thing and protect him. “Always.”

Malia sighs sharply at the idiocy in front of her, pinching the bridge of her nose as she turns back to Lydia, “How do we stop them?”

Lydia sighs, rubbing her forehead with one hand as she stares down at the information Scott got handed over, some of it he acquired himself in his weeks leading and rebuilding the 013 community, and thinks it over. “I have no idea, actually.”

“All we can do for now is remember these creatures aren’t human, not anymore, and there’s nothing we can do for them. We have to protect our own,” Stiles emphasizes, looking at Scott, who looks like he’s in a moral dilemma, not per se agreeing with him but seeing his point before he reluctantly nods.

“Yeah, they’re just rotting flesh,” Liam remarks, letting out deep, frustrated, sigh. “Deadmeat ruining our lives,” he mumbles, throwing a file with info back onto the table and causing loose papers to fly into different directions.

Everyone groans, some even calling Liam names (and he almost feels a ghostly punch on his arm when he starts mentioning the word I.E.D., knowing Allison would always defend Liam, pressing his lips together insteads), and starts collecting the papers. When Stiles stands back up after having picked a photo up, he sees Lydia’s eyes are lit up as she stands there, frozen.

“Lyds?”

She turns her head to look at him, slowly, “They’re _literally_ deadmeat.”

“Yeah, I know.” He confirms, frowning as he looks at her weirdly. “Are you alright? I ask, because you once told me you think they should take every mention of the word ‘literally’ in the history of the written word and shove it up Satan’s a—”

She waves him off, shaking her head as she runs her fingers over all the files, “Deadmeat, literal deadmeat. Their flesh is decaying like—”

He starts to catch on, eyes widening with happiness at this small breakthrough, “Hamburgers, sausages or,” he looks at Isaac, “Taco meat.”

“Okaaaay,” Scott confirms, corners of his mouth turned down, but it’s really a question.

“We’ve been focusing too much on the dead part and not enough on the meat part,” the lanky freckled guy in their midst responds without skipping a beat as picks up one of the blurry pictures of a zombie and sticks it onto their blackboard.

His not so lanky girlfriend elaborates, “Meat decays. If you freeze it, it stops decaying, but the cells are also unable to procreate and thus live. The human body is mostly water, which freezes, and unregulated cold is awful to formerly living things. But, if you, for example, lay it out in the sun too long, the bacteria replicate so fast because of the heat, that the decomposition process speeds up by a hundredfold.”

“Okay,” Scott repeats, still not too sure. Didn’t he take AP bio? Wasn’t this in the curriculum? Or was it during that week Peter Hale returned to fuck shit up for fun?

“Basically dead bodies bloat because of the gases created by those bacteria and after enough exposure, they start going—”

“BOOM,” Stiles fills in with a wicked smile before catching the unamused look on Lydia’s face. He clears his throat, straightening his shirt, “I mean, they’ll explode.”

“So what, we wait it out? Let nature do it’s work? Wait until they either deteriorate by the California summer heat, or until they get bored and make a move for colder areas and freeze?” Kira argues skeptically, and it’s not like she doesn’t have a point.

“Uhm, guys,” Liam cuts in, eyebrows raised like he’s the smartest ever as everyone turns to look at him, “There’s one problem: global warming. Those bodies are nice and cozy and frozen in Alaska until the ice starts to melt and we’re back to square one.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Isaac answers, pulling on his scarf to loosen it, “We wouldn’t ban them to Alaska. The number one enemy of freedom and equal rights is Russia. Plus, it’s cold there. I’m like 98 percent sure. Two birds with one stone.”

“And they _hate_ dykes and twinks!” Malia fills them in helpfully, satisfied look on her face as Isaac beams at her in thanks of her support. Stiles winces just a little, about to open his mouth when Malia rolls her eyes, “I mean, the homosexuals, because,” she checks for Stiles reaction as she nods her head along, “I was _not_ raised by wolves.”

“Guys,” Lydia clenches her jaw, putting one hand on her side as she rubs her temple with the other, “The plan is definitely not to ship them off to any other part of the world. Besides the illogicality and many inconveniences that would bring along considering the macro-demographic areas we’re dealing with, I think between the all of us we can manage altering some flamethrowers, maybe throw together some molotov cocktails and broadcast an international message to any other survivors, right?”

He puts a comforting hand on her back, rubbing lightly as she seems to relax just a little, leaning in to him. It’s like she needs the confirmation herself, and he’s feeling pretty pessimistic right about now, so this is all he can offer.

“Right,” Scott conquers slowly, enthusiastic puppy-like-smile plastered onto his face, “We can do that. We can win this fight. We can… We can survive this.”

Leave it to Scott to be so hopefully enthusiastic he starts emit electromagnetic radiational rays of light and heat, or in layman's terms, he becomes sunshine.

His best friend’s smile wavers just a little as he absentmindedly drags his finger over the table, staring at nothing, “I keep thinking about Deacon, about how he said there was a balance, that for every bad thing that happened, there was good a thing coming.” He doesn’t say it, but the meaning of the words lingers in the ear. What in the frick-frack kind of evil has humankind created to deserve this?

Stiles claps him on the back sympathetically, trying to force his positivity onto himself, “Then get ready for rainbows and unicorns and puppies and sunshine because there must be a hell of a lot good coming.”

. 

It’s weeks later, and the world has not even defeated half of the zombies, but they’re getting there. They (and by they he means him and Lydia) developed a mass-flamethrower and some fire-spitting movement detector operated canons to keep the camp safe in a true Fitz-Simmons manner and are still developing (they’ve always been a team, but this was taking it to a whole different level of ‘team’—like joined-to-the-hip, eating from the same bowl of cereal and sharing the same shower to save time, keeping each other up with lots of kissing and problem-solving-theories in the middle of the night, sharing the same brain—kind of team), Liam managed to repair the radio from the 1300’s by using some old car radio parts to send a message to other survivors about tactics and safe zones and now head of Lydia And Stiles’ Parts Scrambling Expedition Team (the false sense of adult independency does Liam more good than it does Scott’s heart every time he leaves the gates), Scott is leading the community in a truly fantastic way (read: everybody _loves_ Scott McCall—he’s never had THIS much competition for his best friend), Malia and Kira (sometimes Isaac when he’s not Scott’s second asskisser in command) are training some of the camp’s inhabitants to fight with a tactic he likes to call G.I.: Sweet Cop And Insanely Crazy Scary Cop, Melissa and his dad set up a really awesome first aid post and they’re—getting by. Banning Theo to quarantine for the rest of his life was really a plus, too.

He pulls on some of the grass with his free hand, having settled down on a dune overlooking the sand before it fades into the sea, the elbow of his other arm leaning on his knee. He throws it down somewhere beside to him before pulling on the next heap of grass as he watches sundown.

“What are you doing outside of the fence?” It’s Lydia as she sinks down beside him, looping her arm around, pressing her cheek against his arm as she watches the same sunset.

“Just…” He starts to answer but he doesn’t really know what to say. He’s thinking about the most first problem-est first problem of them all. He should be lucky to be alive and still have most of his friends and family around and above all, Lydia. “I don’t know.” At that she takes her head off his arm and look at him in that way only she does, with a love and especially understanding only they share, squeezing his forearm. “Do you… Do you think it’ll ever go back to normal? That we can go home?”

He looks at her and she looks back at him with those half-lidded, rapidly blinking, emotional hazel eyes and he dies a little inside. He just loves her _so_ much, in a way he didn’t even think was humanly possible and might be _his_ own special supernatural talent: loving Lydia Martin. “Be-because, I don’t, I don’t think I can live in this, this world forever. One where I _constantly_ have to worry that some zombie will bite you and I’ll have to, I’ll… I just—I miss it.”

She sighs, looking back at the crimson sky. “I think that home like we knew it won’t _ever_ be our home again. I think that home isn’t necessarily a place. I think that... as long as we’re all together, we’re where we’re supposed to be.” She presses a kiss to his arm, lingering there for a moment before pulling away once he looks down at her.

He leans down, resting his forehead against hers as he reaches out to push some hair out of her face, placing his hand on her cheek. “Just _don’t_ —get bitten, okay? Ever. I don’t think I’ll just go out of my frickin’ mind, I might just go extremely mentally ill and redefine the term ‘mad scientist’ by spending my life building a machine to bring you back, all the while nursing a raging depression.”

She laughs softly, eyes closed as she reaches up to cover the hand on her face. “I’ll try.” She pryes open her eyes carefully, teasing smile playing on her lips, “But I guess as long as we have your all mighty and powerful bat, we’ll be great.”

She’s trying to be funny, but he’s not in a laughing mood. He connects their lips because he means it, maybe not in the way he was able to express it, but he does. He doesn’t want to pretend like he isn’t his own person and that he wouldn’t be able to live without her, but definitely doesn’t want to. They’re a package deal, no negotiation possible, you see. It’s never ‘or’ with them, it’s ‘and’. It’s ride or die.

When he pulls away, he knows she understands. She leans back up to peck his lips again before throwing his arm around her shoulder as they return back to the sunset.

After a while they make it back to the camp, only to see an annoyed Cora in front of Scott’s packshack, arms crossed and skin sun-kissed, sporting a huge backpack on her back. She deadpans, “Lovebirds, how nice of you to join.”

“How did you…”

“Besides the hand-holding and swollen lip thing you guys have going on?” She shrugs, rolling her eyes, “Gee, I don’t know, just a guess?” As if he cared about her knowing his and Lydia’s relationship status, because if Cora was here, that meant…

“I meant, how did you get here?” Stiles clarifies cynically, as he eyes Scott’s home warily. At least it’s still standing.

She glares at him, “I’d go inside that cabin first and worry about my itinerary later.”

Lydia tugs on his hand, with a subtle nod, and they’re just in time to catch Derek’s, “I leave for a _couple_ of months and look what happens!”

He……… is…… blaming……… Scott? Who even… You come into our home, and you have the nerve—1-800-DID I ASK, DEREK?

The rest is apparently already there: Kira and Liam on a couch as they stare up at the two men in before them in fear/admiration/both, Scott not faltering under Derek’s threatening gaze, Isaac frozen in corner, flinching at every word as Malia stands in front of him, growling at the much-hairier-alpha in front of them.

“You seriously want to blame an entire zombie-apocalypse on Scott? Not only is that a form of emotional abuse since you know damn well he idolizes you and a completely ridiculous statement considering the virus broke out across the entire world and was, surprise, completely non-supernatural, it’s seriously fucked up,” Lydia raises her eyebrows at him, not even slightly bothered by the now soul-penetrating glare directed at her, even doing so much as taking a step towards the pissed off predator. Hell _yes_ that’s his girlfriend.

Derek tilts his head, like he’s _actually_ thinking it over. Well, shit man, he was like actually having a good day before this. He made out a with his girlfriend a little and confirmed they weren’t going to die anytime soon, and even before that Liam came home to daddy with a beam and a dusty old scratched up copy of Star Wars that he was going to force Scott to watch as soon as he managed to throw together a dvd-player. He came here to have a relatively normal time before their ten o’clock daily meeting (AKA snack time) and he’s feeling super attacked at the moment. This might be a glorified trailer park, but it’s _their_ glorified trailer park and Derek doesn’t get to come here from his backpack vacation in paradise and talk shit.

Derek’s turns back to Scott, deciding not to take on Lydia by himself, eyebrows furrowed so close together he’s sporting a unibrow. He locks his jaw, swallowing hard and there’s just silence as they stare at each other. It’s starting to become pretty awkward when the younger of the two steps forward and wraps Derek in his arms like a newborn baby or brand new kitten, hugging him tightly, “We’re glad you’re fine, too.”

“Yaaaaaay,” Kira exclaims carefully, clapping her hands together awkwardly, to which the original hairy alpha finally hugs true less-hairy alpha back with an uncomfortable pat to the back.

They catch up a little, exchange pack talk only the two of them seem to understand, Cora comes inside eventually and her and Malia have a small growling pissing contest before joining Kira and Lydia like they’ve known each other their whole lives, him and Liam start working on a dvd-player even until the clock strikes 1:34 AM and Lydia is half asleep against Isaac on the couch. Now if it was anyone else beside _him_ , or should he say Malia’s boyfriend, he’d be less inclined to pull her up and save her life from a claw-attack by said extremely possessive girlfriend.

They walk back to their own hut, hands intertwined for mostly zomb-i-cal reasons like he could trip or she could get pulled away or he really likes touching her, and he takes a moment to appreciate the craziness of it all.

You know, when he pictured getting together with Lydia (which he did, _many_ times, going over multiple scenarios, scenery, lines, occasions, you name it, he thought of it) he never thought it would while they were trying to survive this Hall  & Oates song come to life (maneater, for the patsies among us), fighting over how to build the alarm systems and brainstorming on ‘how to efficiently and fastly kill the most zombies possible’.

She halts them in front of their cabin, looking up at him, eyes glittering in the moonlight. She doesn’t say anything at first, looks unsure, before, “I never told you I feel the same way, earlier, because apparently I’m really bad at telling you I feel the same way.”

He smirks, managing to keep in an evil laugh as he mocks surprise, “Oh shit.. No.. you thought?” He puts a hand to his head, pacing a little, “You thought we were together? I assumed you knew we were just two really good friends, with some additional benefits now and then, I-I feel like such an assclown.”

She shakes her head, the corners of her mouth uplifted as she sighs at his antics, “I was trying to assure you I love you just as much as you love me and that I’m not settling or waiting around for someone else and that if you died, I would go insane, too and try to build a machine to turn you back alive—although I’d be much more successful at it—but we could take the sarcastic route if you really want to. It’s fine.” She straightens his collar, maintaining eye-contact and he’s kind of speechless.

“You… Honestly?” He starts to stammer, then shaking his head and deciding not to ruin it now, as he presses his lips against hers. It’s long and slow, unlike the short and sweet ones which is the default setting these days, and it feels a lot like home. “You think your Frankenstein-machine would be better than mine?”

She huffs, rolling her eyes slightly as she slaps his chest, “You think a bat is your best possible defense mechanism against everything, of course my machine would be better.”

He smiles, smiles, smiles, because he can’t help but feel total and complete adoration for this girl even during the time they’re in, the stress they’re under, the things they have to do to survive. “I love you.”

...............................

What is she…?

“Why are you getting undressed?”

“Like I said, I’m really bad at reciprocating your feelings—so I thought I’d just show you instead,” she’s already halfway inside their cabin when she pauses unbuttoning her blouse, maddening smirk on her face, “Unless, you don’t want me too?”

It might just be the high he’s on talking, or his complete and utter bias when it comes to her, but he kinds of thinks he can survive anything with Lydia Martin by his side.

He barely manages to shake his head when she finishes unbuttoning and lets the flimsy material fall to the floor. He follows her backwards steps carefully, slamming the door behind him. So he’s a little eager… He’s always eager when it comes to her because it’ll never be enough. “I could stop any time. Just say the word,” she smirks as she goes for clasp of her bra incredibly slowly. He shakes his head again, more forcefully, thinking he’d run into a fire for her, catch a bullet for her, sacrifice his life for her and if all of her ‘ _I love you too_ ’’s were like this she might be the actual cause of his dead someday.

Okay, so he can’t survive _almost_ anything—just not Lydia herself. 

Guess his note came true after all.

.

  
**farewell, i've gone, to take my throne**  
**above, don't weep for me**  
**cause this will be the labor of my love (my love)**

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading this???  
> lemme know what you think!!!  
> or i'll send zombies to your house to eat your brains!!!  
> much love from to you


End file.
